Post Apocalyptic Homesick Blues
by Strangelove707
Summary: An amusingly gruesome tale about war, survival, bizarre friendship, and non-gratuitous gore. Taking place in Fallout's universe, with roots in the 70s exploitation movies, and inspired by the works of filmmakers such as Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone.
1. Chapter 1: Woke Up This Morning

Post-Apocalyptic Homesick Blues: The Strange and Gruesome Odyssey of Smiling Jenny Across The Chaos and The Wilderness of The Mischievous South Wasteland

* * *

War. War never changes. World leaders with too many warheads and too few brain cells wiped out each other's countries, thinking that would save their own. The Super Mutants up in that Mariposa shithole wanted to turn the entire Wasteland into a republic of deformed green rednecks. The Enclave, on the other hand, followed the old-fashioned method of killing everyone they didn't want around, in order to get the Wasteland all for themselves. But in the end this entire gallery of clusterfucks is nothing but something we can all look back at, just to have a glimpse of the sort of fuck-up we have in store for ourselves for both near and distant futures. Because war never changes.

Unluckily enough, we survived. Even though the nukes they used with the sole purpose of permanently fucking humanity's shit up did the trick as properly as they could, some of us locked themselves in underground shelters. Apparently, even after all what happened, the human race was about to ask for seconds. After a century or so, the inhabitants of the Vaults came out to refill the empty space left by war. The idea was to preserve the human species so it'd show up back again after earth's radiation levels dropped a bit, and then start civilization anew. It didn't really work out as I guess they planned; Granted our society is steady enough to have a currency, methods of honest living and sometimes even laws, but I'd never use the world "civilized" to describe what we came up with.

Life in the Wasteland is more about killing than living. If you don't have the guts to handle a gun or simply don't want to, allow me to inform you your death warrant is already signed. Don't fool yourself into thinking you're promoting peace by not fighting back. The only thing you'll be doing is fueling some frenzied raider's delusion that he can enter an unarmed man's property and shoot him full of holes to loot his valuable stuff and get away with enough nerve and bullets to be already prepared for the next round. You're given the choice to fight back or not, but choosing the latter isn't as comforting as it sounds. Not fighting back means locking yourself in a small shack in a distant and properly hidden settlement and never even considering opening the front door. If that's the case, rest assured you have a fifty-fifty chance of survival. That excluding the fact you'll eventually need food and water.

Ah, but what do I know. I'm the kind of woman that would make the cheapest and dirtiest whore you've ever met wonder in which point of history women had to sink so low for something that could be called a living. But no, boss, I'm not in the same business as her. It isn't hard to guess what someone like me does of life. All I've been doing the last two or so decades is killing and pillaging. Back in the day I was a smalltime raider, but that's past. Today I'm a professional, the average Soldier of Fortune. Bounties, contract killing, "In Gold We Trust", all that jazz. Killing and looting who I'm told by the bounty offices and outlaw organizations is what makes me sure the next meal is on it's way and I'll be able to afford a place to sleep at night. I'm almost a thirty-year-old, but I still see myself as that little girl with that overwhelming pain between her blood-soaked legs, a rusty razor on the right hand, Deagle on the left, and that bone-chilling yet heart-warming grin on her face. That night I became what I am today. That night I was born. Smiling.

And here I am heading south. The west is the place to go if you want to settle down or make a relatively honest living. The north is a no man's land, a freezing white desert with more radioactivity than any other site I've seen in the Californian wastes. And the east... Well, I'm not really sure about the entire area they call "Capital Wasteland", but the DC area turned into an unending shootout since the rest of the Enclave moved there a couple of years ago. But South Wasteland is a land of opportunities. For outlaws and gunrunners, that is. Gentlemen around here use the best pieces around; Energy weapons and Power Armors can be owned by anyone with enough cash to afford them, not only by the Brotherhood's wonder boys. It's pretty satisfying to be able to buy the ammo or the guns you need with the closest merchant in the neighborhood, instead of having to pay a visit to the black market's nearest branch. Not to mention the price, of course. Any pissant with a hundred coins in his pocket can buy a .44 fully loaded with FMJ rounds. Thing is, that might be safe enough to survive for a week in the wastes back west, but by the south even the children are packing heavier stuff. Sometimes they can even shoot straight, and maybe even straight enough to make you regret trying your luck in here.

But make no mistake, boss. I've seen it all. And here in the South Wasteland, I'm home.

* * *

Chapter 1: Woke Up This Morning

Smiling Jenny waited long enough. By the time the sun disappeared amongst the dunes, she was already remembering how bad she was in the art of being patient. She always considered herself a bit too reckless, but not too much for her own good. As far as she knew, her recklessness was one of the main reasons she would always draw first. Still, she was practiced enough to know the element of surprise is never useless, especially when combined with a bit of the good old scouting. Jenny woke up about 10 AM that day. Reached the site by midnight the day before, and spent nine entire hours scouting. At first she planned to spend only five hours, but got impressed with how heavily guarded Steiner's hideout was. That is, heavily guarded enough to make her come up with a plan.

The place was an abandoned gas station in the middle of the desert. The highway it was located in was long buried by the constant sand storms, hiding the only track someone could have to the place. Steiner wasn't a particularly experienced raider, from what Jenny could tell. His record said he killed a bunch of dozens, ten or so women, a kid or two. Savaged some small settlements, never had the guts to raid a town. Steiner's main feature was having enough people around to save him from apparently any dangers the Wasteland could offer. The place consisted in a former convenience store annexed to a cafИ on the right, a garage on the left and two small shacks in the back. The large windows of the cafИ and the shop were all shattered, but they were shut tight with several heavy planks and some plates of scrap metal stitched together poorly.

After she woke up, she spent the first two hours studying the place. She laid down on the sand, her back to the sun, and observed the place from about mile away with her binoculars. After the first hour, she came closer. Sticking to the nearby bushes was the wise thing to do; dressing in black wouldn't work out for her advantage on a sandy landscape. She didn't spot any hidden entrances or escape routes, and soon concluded they didn't really care about escaping in case they were attacked. That most likely meant they weren't really planning on ever running away, and imagining them trying to convince themselves of that made Jenny chuckle. She took a half an hour break to drink some water and rest her eyes, and another half to check her equipment one last time again. The following while she dedicated to study every soldier's gear and position, and the movements of the ones patrolling. That took a three-hour while, because there were ten men only in the outside. Two snipers planted on the edges of the roof and one patrolling it. Four men on mounted 'sixties, two on each side of the front door, one by the right of the cafИ and the fourth one by the left of the garage. The last three were armed with assault rifles, patrolling around the block randomly.

The next two hours were a mere overtime. She got a bit relieved when Steiner stepped out of the front door, apparently drunk, and started shouting how he needed people inside, because he didn't feel safe on his own. One of the snipers and the soldiers handling the two front M60s dragged their boss inside and didn't come back. That way Jenny concluded there weren't any other men inside before, making it a total of eleven men including Steiner. After the two hours passed, she realized the amount of time she spent there, and how itchy her trigger fingers were.

Jenny got up and shook the sand off her clothes. She was dressing her everyday black duster, over her old and loose grey tracksuit. The duster was shut until its last button, which was right below her throat. The lower half of her face and shoulders were wrapped by a black silk blanket, with her biker glasses hanging from her neck. These pieces of apparel served to protect her lips and eyes from the sand storms, respectively. After getting up on her feet, she opened her coat, leaving the .44 to be freely reached during battle. While walking slowly towards Steiner's hideout, Jenny drew the combat shotgun that hanged from her back besides her old Chinese assault rifle. Leaving the shotgun on the left hand, she drew the revolver with her right.

Twelve steps, pointing the handgun to the left sniper's head. She fearlessly pulled the trigger, and the desert's silence was promptly drowned in the echo of the gunshot. The bullet hit the man right across his right eye, exiting his head while turning it into a messy explosion of skull shards and brain chunks. The other two men on the roof jumped with the noise, and their surprise was good enough for her. She shot the one in the middle somewhere in his face, and his head ended up the same way as his late partner's.

She looked left, and saw two of the patrolling soldiers running towards her. Closely enough she could see they were fairly younger than her, and most importantly: scared. Couldn't handle those rifles, that she could tell. They were in extremely close range and not even risking to shoot, almost as if they were trying to attack her with bayonets. That left them two shotgun shells, the first in one's chest and the second in the other's face. The recoil of two shots in a row summed up with the weapon's weight on her off hand hurt her arm's joints, but she had no time to worry about that.

Looking back to the roof, the third sniper loaded his gun and got her in his sights. Skillfully enough she shot him in the right shoulder, even though she was aiming for his head. Another shot just to be sure, this time hitting the bull's eye. His head now in pieces, Jenny looked around to try to spot the other men. This time on the right, she heard automatic gunshots. The bullets hit the sand besides her feet, raising a bit of dust and making her step back quickly. She saw the third patroller cursing while smacking his jammed rifle. She could see he was older than the other two boys, and was seemingly more apt with the gun considering the range he was shooting from. Once again for her luck, it jammed, and she gave him the Magnum's last two rounds.

Jenny's attention was once again caught by a noise. Now she heard the two remaining men loading the M60 by the left of the door, more scared than anyone else back there and rushing to load the gun. She holstered the empty .44 back and hung the shotgun back on her left shoulder, while reaching for the Chinese rifle and letting out a brief and loud laughter even though it was barely audible due to the rag covering her mouth. All the time she thought the machine guns were already loaded, but apparently the men responsible for them were too amateurish to even bother to do that. She came just a little closer, keeping the rifle steady and the trigger pulled. A second and a half and they were already bleeding on the ground, the 'sixtie still unloaded. "Amateurs", she whispered for herself while reloading, to give her ego a little boost.

Upon reaching the front door, she realized the others didn't come out for her yet. She guessed the gunshots could be clearly heard from the inside, and by that time the remaining three men and Steiner should already be outside fighting too. Considering she was already having a lot of fun realizing that they were pushovers, she decided to have a little more fun. Got a flashbang out of one of the duster's internal pockets and held it with her left hand, the Chinese rifle still on the right.

"Steiner", she shouted near the door. Made a two seconds break before continuing, and just like predicted she heard the clicks of guns being loaded. "You've got to have hired the best collection of lame excuses for bodyguards I've ever seen since the day I first stepped on the South Wasteland's sands. Seriously, where do you get men like these? I'm need of some, it's getting hard to find living targets that are fun to shoot these days."

The men stayed in silence. Taunted, but expecting her to slip.

"Who the fuck are you?" Steiner shouted back. His voice implied he drunk considerably more since the last time she saw him that day. Not to mention he sounded pretty badly scared.

"Smiling Jenny." she answered, hearing some whispers inside. She was flattered.

"What the fuck do you want? You want money? The old man?"

"I'm here for the bounty." she replied. Didn't know who that old man was, probably a slave or a hostage of some sort. "You have a face pretty enough to be worth 500 coins."

"I can give you three times that, Smiling Jenny!" the drunken voice shouted back. "Just spare me and I'll... Eh, I'll spare you back. And pay you. Come in so we can talk."

"Ah, now that's what I'm talking about." she said, still amused by Steiner's stupidity. "But I'll only come in if you come here and open the door for me. And you better be unarmed, just like me."

"Really?" the voice asked. "I mean, sure, what the hell. Let me just get the keys."

She heard some whispers, followed by the sound of a couple of steps. She bit the flashbang's pin with her left front teeth, and heard some keys tingling. When the doorknob was turning, she kicked down the door with all her strength. Hit the man on the other side like a truck, and even though she wasn't sure if it was Steiner or one of the three, she pulled the pin and hurled the thing inside. About the time it hit the ground she already covered her eyes and ears with her left arm, and then it exploded, filling the room with it's hellish noise. She uncovered her face and saw the people inside: two men by her right armed with sawn-offs, one lying on the floor in front of her and Steiner sitting on an old armchair in the back of the joint. Jenny quickly disposed of the two men, and unloaded the rest of the clip on the man on the floor. Steiner dressed an old pre-war-styled velvet robe over his bare torso and his armored legs and feet. He was now up on his feet, and started shooting the ceiling randomly with his Desert Eagle, still stunned. She smacked his flaccid stomach with the butt of her rifle, making him fall on his knees, dropping his handgun and covering his belly with his hands while screaming in pain. She then hit him just as hard behind his neck, making him hit the ground on his face and staying there, seemingly unconscious.

Jenny grabbed his Desert Eagle and pointed to the back of his bald head, firing a single shot and dropping it besides him. She took a brief walk around the place, hoping to find either something of value, remaining bodyguards or that old man he mentioned. The place was a complete dump, and they didn't keep anything worth carrying back to town to change for whatever amount of coins it could be worth. Fortunately, the old man was a sort of reward she'd never guess she'd get. He was inside the shop's employee's restroom, sitting on the closed toilet seat. He dressed a sweaty sleeveless shirt and brahmin-skin trousers. He had a black cloth bag over his head, while his hands were tied to his back and his bare feet tied around the toilet's bowl by the ankles. Jenny slowly approached him and took the bag off his head. She saw his head hanging down, the mildly long blondish white hair wet in sweat. He raised his head, and his eyes met her's. She looked at him in shock, and he shared her surprise. Behind that wrinkled face and that rough beard, she recognized him.

"I'll be fucking damned..." she whispered, half to herself. She smiled. "Lee Roosevelt."

"Smiling Jenny..." he replied with his deep and scruffy voice. He coughed, since it was apparently the first time he talked to someone else in a long time. "I forgot this kind of place attracts your kind."

"My kind, huh? That's probably why you ended up here." said Jenny, reaching for her hunting knife.

"I didn't come here collecting some cheap bounty. I got abducted."

"No shit? You getting slow in the old age, Lee?" she said, leaning over his left shoulder and cutting the ropes tying his hands.

"I wouldn't say that." replied Lee, massaging his wrists while Jenny was on her knees, slicing the ropes around his ankles. "I think just I messed with the wrong people."

"I know how that feels", said Jenny while getting back up and exiting the bathroom. "Let's talk about your exploits outside, boss. I'll fix us something to eat."

Lee rose from the toilet seat. His knees and elbows felt horribly sore. All his joints were in pain, for the matter. He stepped out of the toilet and saw Jenny once again on her knees, but this time besides Steiner's body, holding his left hand and hacking off his index finger with her hunting knife.

"Are the bounty offices demanding proofs now?" asked Lee.

"Yeah. Appatently a lot of con-artists ended up getting away with the bounties without even having to face the targets, these last few years." She drew a small cigarette case out of her pocket and placed the finger in there. "They are now demanding proofs. Say that fingers are the best choice." She started searching the fridge next to Steiner's armchair. "You know, since they can get digitals and shit out of them. You hungry, boss?"

Lee didn't answer.

* * *

"So?" asked Lee. Jenny looked back at him and ended chewing up the chunk of brahmin steak she bit. She swallowed it with a mouthful of beer.

"So what?" she asked, even though she knew what Lee meant. They were back in the desert, a couple of miles away from Steiner's place, sitting on a dune next to a campfire she came up with. She was once again wrapped in her rags for the cold night. Save for the blanket that protected her face, which was removed while she was eating. Lee was dressing a leather jacket he stole from one of Jenny's recent victims back in the hideout, along with a large dusty brahmin skin blanket over his shoulders. She cooked two slices of brahmin steak for them, but he didn't want his. All he wanted that moment was whiskey and to keep himself warm.

"Well, you look a lot different from how I left you." he said, taking a sip from his whiskey. "What have you been doing, kiddo?"

"Odd jobs. I'm basically paid to do things that involve killing people."

"You're gonna have to give me more than that." said Lee. "You still raid?"

"Not at all." she said. Had some more beer. "I'm a professional merc now. I'm being hired by a couple of mates in Fort Travis, every week they come up someone to kill or something to steal from someone they want dead. I collect bounties when work doesn't show up."

"But no raids."

"Nah. That was teenager stuff." she said, laughing low when she noticed he smiled.

"And these tatoos?" he said, referring to the unusual tribal designs on her left cheek and below her eyes.

"Ah, these?" she said, gently scratching her cheek with her right hand. "Ceremonial gift. From some friends I made a couple of years ago, back west. Tribals, but surprisingly very smart. And fun, too. We smoked, drank, exchanged stories..." She chuckled. "You made a lot of fans amongst them, boss. They didn't believe half of the stories I told about Paladin Lee Roosevelt and his band of bastards, but I can tell they loved them all."

"Yeah" said Lee, looking down and smiling. "I guess that's the good side of doing what we and the boys did. So you can tell a bunch of tribals and they can laugh convinced it's all a big joke" he said, as his smile vanished. He took another sip of the whiskey. "Since it all sounds as pathetic and grisly as some pre-war exploitation movie."

"Don't put things this way, boss." said Jenny, ignoring the old man's guilt. "We have reasons when we quit, after all. Wasn't that yours?"

"I guess. All I know is that my karma is catching up with me." said Lee, taking a large mouthful of the whisky and hissing a bit after swallowing it.

"I hope this has something to do with why you were tied and blindfolded inside Steiner's bathroom."

"Yes, kiddo, it does. It's actually pretty much the main reason."

"Good, because you still owe me that explanation."

* * *

Lee Roosevelt was Jenny's best friend and mentor during her late childhood. She never considered him a father, since she never really understood the idea of being someone's daughter. Before finding her, Lee was cast out of the Brotherhood of Steel for selling classified material and technology for people all across the Wasteland, including Enclave personnel and Super Mutant rogues. He then became a raider, starting a group with his friend O'Brien and other raiders he got to know as time went by. Although he lost more men than he could remember during his raider years, his group consisted basically in particularly well-trained men such as himself. After a couple of years attacking only travelers, small caravans and a settlement or two every once in a while, Lee's group started raiding other bandits. It was after crippling an organization of slavers that Lee would come to meet Jenny, still a little girl at the time. Lee took a rare liking on her, and after a series of shocking unexpected events, he was convinced she had potential.

He had been around the South Wasteland for two years. Lived in a rented shack in the Metroplex's residential area, and worked as the chief and sub-manager of a small company of bodyguards for hire, being hired mainly by caravans of water traders who needed to head back to Headstone in safety. It all started when a couple of weeks back, while off duty, Lee by chance met Kowalski, an old partner of his and Jenny from the old days. At first they were really glad to see each other after such a long time, but soon enough Lee realized his old friend wasn't particularly happy. Kowalski seemed restless, and the crowd of the bar they were in seemed to make him more nervous every second that passed. He told Lee how he was doing, that he was now selling Jet in the Metroplex from some big time gangsters in some other town, and even joked about being jealous of Lee's ability to live an honest life even after all they did. After a while talking, Lee had the nerve to ask if there was something wrong. Kowalski was relieved that Lee had finally noticed, because he was in fact in a tight spot.

Kowalski's trouble started after a trip to the desert. He was heading to Headstone that day, but heard of rumors of raiders cruising the main route lately that month. A fellow merchant told him about an alternative way, which consisted basically in heading for Fort Travis and getting it's main route to Headstone. After some hours away from Fort Travis, Kowalski ended up lost. Eventually, he stumbled upon this small crater, and after following a series of paths that he didn't really describe in a clear enough way, he ended up inside a Vault. He didn't remember the number marked on the door, but it had two numbers and one of them was a six or an eight. The door was left opened, and he was curious enough to at least inspect the place briefly.

He'd never been to a Vault before, but he heard a couple of stories from merchants and scavengers who had. The place wasn't different from any decently designed military bunker, and even though the array of hallways and galleries was vast, he didn't get lost. The place was clearly abandoned long ago by the residents, considering the rust and dirt on the walls. The doors only opened manually, since there wasn't any spare energy to make them open automatically.

Things started getting weird when Kowalski found the first storage room. The room didn't look as old as the rest of the Vault's interiors: The walls weren't rusty or stained by the humidity, the lights worked properly and the shelves were all perfectly lined and, most importantly, filled. He couldn't believe the kind of hardware he saw there: plasma handguns, models of rifles he never saw before, explosives of all kinds and even anti-tank guns. The back wall of the room was covered with lockers, which were filled with sets of high-tech armors and helmets that made the Brotherhood's look like ragged Brahmin skin outfits. The remaining storage rooms were identical, save for a couple of random weapons. It was a total of seventeen rooms. What he saw there, as he described to Lee, was enough to turn each and every man in South Wasteland into a walking arsenal. But the main event was on the seventeenth room, the one in the end of the kilometer-long hallway: a lead container, with the size of truck, completely sealed. A hydrogen bomb.

* * *

"Wait, what the fuck?"said Jenny, looking at Lee horribly confused.

"At least that's what he said." said Lee.

"A fucking hydrogen bomb... You mean, like the ones they used in the war?"

"No. Those were nuclear missiles. H-bombs are thermonuclear bombs, and that's almost a thousand times more powerful than a regular nuclear warhead."

Jenny chocked in her whiskey when she heard the word "thousand".

"Jesus fucking Christ, how's that even possible? I mean, a thing like that could turn the entire Wasteland into a goddamn mushroom cloud."

"Hahah, no, not at all. You see, kiddo, a single H-bomb wouldn't be enough to destroy the whole American territory, even excluding the Canadian ground. But well..." He took a break and thought a bit about the scenario, realizing how dangerous that thing could be. "I guess it would be enough to vaporize a nice deal of South Wasteland, and enough radioactivity to leave the survivals something to worry about."

"Bad enough for me." said Jenny, taking another shot. "But anyway, boss, how does Kowalski's little discovery jeopardizes you hide?"

"See, I'm not finished yet."

* * *

Kowalski couldn't carry any of the stuff he found, but he knew a couple of men in Headstone who could lend him a hand. He left the Vault promptly, and headed back to the surface. By the end of the day he found his way back to Headstone. The first thing he did was contacting an old friend who happened to be his number one buyer of Jet, and knew a couple of guys who had a pack of hardware-carrying brahmin. Kowalski talked to the men, and said that each one of them could have a slice of the loot if they helped him carry the stuff out of the Vault and back to Headstone. They didn't believe him at first, but eventually decided to give it a shot. The next morning, Kowalski, his friend, the other five merchants and their four brahmin headed back to the desert, following the man's steps.

They reached the crater he found the day before, but something wasn't quite right. They spotted two Vertibird aircrafts landed next to the edge, guarded by a patrol of about ten armored and heavily armed men. They heard voices coming from the bottom of the crater, as if someone was shouting. That was when they were spotted, and what followed was fast and brutal.

Three of the merchants were shot on sight with the soldiers' strange plasma beams. The other two tried to fight back, and were liquidated. Kowalski's friend surrendered, and wasn't shot. He, for one, ran away just like the brahmin, and all he could hear was his friends screams as he was beaten with the butts of the men's rifles and the loud noise of laser rifles being fired behind him. Kowalski was lucky enough to not be hit or followed, but he only looked back after a hundred miles running. Only stopped running when he found himself back in the Metroplex.

That wasn't the last he saw of those mysterious men. He told Lee he was being followed on the street. That he was always being watched by at least a person when he was in a crowd. He knew his friend was interrogated and most certainly spilled the beans, and now those men knew he had been sneaking inside their particular weapons cache. And most importantly, that he knew they had a bomb capable of destroying half of the Wasteland. Why they didn't dispose of him, he wasn't sure why.

Lee was pretty surprised after Kowalski was done. They spent the whole night in that bar, and Lee was so interested he didn't even notice how time went by. He told his old friend that he didn't need to worry, that he could arrange some of his company's bodyguards to keep him safe from whoever wanted to get him. Kowalski thanked Lee for the concern, but he'd only be involving more people in that entire mess. He was sure his captured associate was "up to his butt with plasma charges", and that he'd eventually end up just as bad. He knew the men who were after him weren't just "pissed off average Joes with half-assed weapons", but "some sorta major league of badasses packing some hardcore shit".

Lee asked if he was "sure you don't want me to stick around?", at least to "be sure the men following you are as dangerous as you keep telling me they are". But Kowalski didn't want "any single mate of mine having his head followed by some 'sychotic merc's sniper's crosshair as he step outta home". As far as he was concerned, as he told Lee, "you may as well be in a tight spot, just for knowing what I know".

* * *

"Wait, let me guess..." she said in a calm tone, slowly raising her opened hands as a sign for him to stop. "So now those freaks are after you, and Steiner happened to be with them."

"Indeed. At least that's what I guess, given the circumstances."

"Cool story, boss." continued Jenny, drinking the last bit of whiskey from the little bottle. "But why did you really take your time to tell me all of this?"

Lee shrugged.

"I don't have anything better to do right now, besides walking back home. Which I don't plan doing until morning."

"That wasn't my question, Lee. Come to think of it, if you were dragged into the eye of this shitstorm just by hearing a greasy old man's story, why did you tell me all of this? Wouldn't it leave me in danger as well?"

"You see, kiddo," he said, looking a bit embarrassed. "I just got careless. We were talking on a crowded bar, and it wasn't located in the kind of place only model citizens hang around. The Dallas Block is just the place for hired mercs in the Metroplex to spend their time and money, and it's damn well likely that one of those bastards heard Kowalski talking to me."

"Could've been one of Steiner's men?"

"Could have been Steiner himself." said Lee in matter-of-factly way. "Never even heard of him before they brought me here, so I wouldn't haven noticed if he showed up before."

"I get it. But about you involving me in this deal..."

"Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But unless there's someone spying on us right now--", but he was interrupted when she looked over both her shoulders, looking uneasily suspicious. She was always a bit of a paranoid, he thought to himself, and continued. "I mean, if nobody heard us talking right now, then nobody knows you know all that stuff. So I suppose you're not in danger."

"Yeah, I agree." she said, leaving her paranoia aside and now looking rather joyful. "But the thing is: Is that what I want?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. She chuckled and got up, shaking the sand off the lower back of her duster.

"I dunno, boss. I mean, an H-Bomb? All that high tech stuff? That's some serious shit we're talking about. The kind of shit that makes it worth a try."

"Jennifer..." said Lee, starting to have a clue about what she had in my mind. "What the fuck are you talking about? You can't possibly be con--"

"C'mon, why can't you see things my way? I'm a goddamn professional, I've gotta make some cash everyone once in a while. And it's not dumping opportunities like these that said cash is gonna be made..."

Lee raised fast. He walked hard through the sandy ground and grabbed Jenny by her coat's lapel. Her smile promptly died.

"Enough with the jokes, you cocky little bitch." he said in her face. Her right hand reached for the wrist of the arm holding her, but he ignored it. "This is not some of your smalltime odd jobs. These men are out of your league, out of my league, and most importantly, out of the league of any son of a bitch you and I ever killed. They are packing weapons you never even dreamed of, and that includes a warhead of the most dangerous kind of bomb ever crafted. They hired a man to kidnap me, and were just about to kill me, just like they probably already did with Kowalski. If you..."

But his speech suddenly lost it's grief. Her gloved fingers squeezed his forearm like a boa constrictor. Under the skin and the leather, he felt the bones of her hand as hard as rough diamonds, in a calm yet brutal struggle that would be enough to crush his forearm if she kept up for a few more seconds. Her eyes were mildly narrowed, her eyebrows low and her lips relaxed and lifeless. He slowly dropped her lapel, and she just as slowly let him go off.

Her grip was enough to make him realize. Things have changed since the last time he saw her. She was not only making a profession out of her marksman skills, but of all her aggressiveness. Probably knew how to handle herself in a fist fight, and under all those rags she carried muscles and bones hard enough to make a Super Mutant cry like an abused underage whore. I need to convince myself, he though at that moment, that this is not that little girl I first met anymore. Maybe it was the wilderness of the South Wasteland. Maybe it was the spit in the eye every mercenary receives after some time in the job. Maybe those tribals she met. Maybe simply time. Smiling Jenny became something else.

Lee stared at her for a second, massaging his forearm with his other hand. She stared back at him, like a dog smelling the fear of his victim. He stood there, making it clear he was expecting her to deliver the final word. A sort of way to admit defeat and keep his pride intact. She simply walked a couple of steps, kicked some sand into the campfire, and kneeled down to pick up her stuff.

"The Metroplex isn't too far from here." she said, hanging her shotgun on the back and picking up the rifle. "I strongly suggest you start walking right now, this place isn't exactly safe at night. I'd go with you, but I really gotta be back home soon."

Still crouched, she grabbed a small handgun out of a small holster strapped next to her right boot. She hanged the rifle over her left shoulder and handed the little gun to Lee.

"Philadelphia Derringer. Nice little guy, they don't make them anymore. Much like all the good pre-war guns." said Jenny, as Lee reluctantly picked it up, as if he was afraid of her. "Don't go all trigger happy in your trip back home, this is just for extreme situations. It only carries two caps, so shoot them wisely."

She finished gearing up, and before leaving turned back to him.

"Just so you know, you don't need to worry about me. I'll get back to my usual business, because I do agree enough people are in trouble already." She covered her eyes with the smoky biker glasses and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and neck, covering her mouth.

"Heh, an H-Bomb.", he could hear her say. "Hell if I'd know what to do with one. Take care, boss."

She walked slowly down the dune. Lee shoved the Derringer in his leather jacket's inner pocket, picked up his almost empty whiskey bottle and stood there. He stood there for a couple of minutes, just finishing drinking and watching over Smiling Jenny as she wandered away. For some reason, he was sure his nightmare wasn't even nearly over, and she was now a part of it. He wanted to run down that dune, reach her, tell her he was wrong about her. That of all the gunslingers and mercenaries he ever met, she was the most dangerous, the deadliest, the best that could be had to be offered. He wanted to see what she was made of, what the young woman he trained and raised was now able to do. He wanted to see her butcher all the men that stepped in her shadow, to prove him she could outsmart and kill even the most merciless and heavily armed men in the South Wasteland. That old, worn-out Brotherhood of Steel outcast didn't want much, in the end. All he wanted was something to be proud of.

He took a step towards her direction, but she was already gone. Already lost in the blurry horizon between the black sky and the sands of Texas.


	2. Chapter 2: When You're Down and Out

Chapter 2: When You're Down and Out

South Wasteland was her home, but Fort Travis was what she liked to think of as an office. A place where the work shows up, it's done, and where you should go to receive the paycheck. Smiling Jenny was a well-known figure in the dirty and ruined streets of Texas' former capital. She'd been living in there for about a year, but kept changing her address constantly. At first it was a common room inside the ruins of a small shopping mall. There she met her first associates and got her first jobs. Then, she would move to a shack in an improvised residential area, where it was safer to keep her hardware. After another series of changes, she would eventually end up getting her steadiest safe house since the first; this time, the basement of a weapons store. A nice an inconspicuous place to be, as what she liked to call for dramatic purposes, "a hideout".

Jenny never really spent a lot of time in the other cities of the former Texas Commonwealth. Other than a collection of small settlements, trading posts and smaller towns, the only places of true interest in that side of the South Wasteland were the three major cities: Fort Travis, The Metroplex and Headstone. Fort Travis was a relatively safe and low down place, raised from the dust that was made of Austin. The Metroplex was surely the biggest of the three, since it was composed by the remains of three cities: Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington. Headstone, former Houston, was South Wasteland's major trading post. Merchants of all sorts and from all places would go to Headstone to trade whatever is worth anything.

In the end, Jenny didn't have any particular reason visit those places. Trading weapons in Headstone and looking for new jobs in the Dallas Block sounded like good plans for the future. Still, as long as there was money left to be made in Fort Travis, there was no reason whatsoever to leave.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when she arrived in the outskirts of town. The desert's sand below her feet was now a hard and dry pavement, scarred with cracks left by time and covered in dust from the desert's wind. She walked slowly across the old road that led to the city, watching the horizon while the skeletons of the old buildings of Austin grew in front of her as she came closer. She soon saw the small shacks and worn-out houses that covered the sandy ground in the near outskirts of the former metropolitan area. Walked over the road that crossed the group of randomly positioned small buildings, observing the people of that humble community. An old man sitting on a rocking chair, resting in the shadow of the porch while observing that strange black ghost that she was for his eyes. A skinny and unhealthily pale middle-aged woman washing clothes in a bucket of infected water, looking at Jenny with suspicious and sad blue eyes. Little boys playing joyfully in the middle of rode, laughing and mimicking gunshot sounds with their mouths, firing unloaded revolvers at a third one with a bizarre greenish brown rag mask over his head, who swings a broomstick while roaring and running like a frenzied Yao Guai. That's it boys, she thought, give that Super Mutant some of the good old Texas medicine. A tall and strong black man, in the back of his house, teaching his two skinny sons how to use a hunting rifle, the three of them taking turns to shoot empty Nuka Cola bottles over a box in the other side of the backyard. Another three kids just ahead, this time two healthy and mud-stained boys running after a cute freckled girl, the three of them laughing and giggling while running around in deformed circles. They stop when they see Smiling Jenny coming, looking at her with fear and fascination. She ignores them, walks past them as they step out of her way. She finds it funny the way she goes past that sight so frequently, yet people still look at her as if she was a suspicious outsider.

Finally, she reaches the city itself. The damaged pavement slightly less sandy, the morning sun sticking through the breaches of the ruined buildings. Across the streets, all sorts of people. Farmers and general everyday people having breakfast or drinking in the small improvised bars and restaurants around the empty street block. Merchants dragging their caravans to the commercial side of town, followed by their employees and packs of brahmin carrying the merchandise. Some hobos in the alley, a couple of them still sleeping on the rubble while the others improvise their day's first meal out of a dead Radroach and bottles of hot beer. Some settlers and farm workers, either heading off to work or getting home from the night shift, going in and out from the busted apartments and common houses in the residential area.

She heads for the commercial block, where the city's bounty office lies. More caravans heading from different directions, or different streets. A group of five mercenaries walks past her as they turn around from the corner by the end of the street. They dress dirty beige dusters over their reinforced ranger armors, while their biker goggles and oxygen masks hang from their necks and their weapons from their backs. She recognizes them as members from the fairly-known Sidewinder Syndicate, a group of relatively tame mercs known for it's high number of agents and several branches in the south's main cities. One of them seems to recognize her, smiles and pulls the tip of his old cowboy hat, in a sign of salutation. She salutes him in return, and when they're past her, she looks over her shoulder almost involuntarily; the cowboy smiles while looking at her over his own, his partners in silence, pretending they don't notice her. She reaches the end of the street, spotting other armored or armed men walking around. Probably more freelancer mercs. Others dress familiar outfits, some with logos drawn on them. Most likely a sign they are members of some syndicate or company, most of which she doesn't recognize. Some don't notice her, others have their attention drawn by her presence. Smiling Jenny hears her name being whispered between some of them, while one shouts it towards her. She turns around to see in a distance a youngster she doesn't recognize, smiling and waving to her vigorously. Assuming he was a former partner or a friend of a friend, she waves back and heads back to her way.

After several minutes walking and observing the everyday people of Fort Travis, Jenny reached her destination. The bounty office was a small building with two floors, adapted from an old post office. The man responsible for the bounties was Slim Avery, an old black man who used to be one of the number one lawbringers in the South Wasteland's early years, when the first settlers and Vault dwellers of that southtern portion were still reinhabitting the wasted cities. Avery was associated to the Lousiana Regulators, a company of bounty hunters that started as a mere guild of vigilantes and renegade lawmen, and eventually started to promote bounty hunts all across the South Wasteland. He was the first of them to take the business to Texas, and was to this day their main representative outside of Lousiana. He was now old and slow, but still as sharp as they come. Jenny already threated him like a business associate, or a sort of co-worker. They usually met everyday when she was looking for bounties.

"Morning, Slim." she said, taking the sheet and the goggles out of her face to leave it perfectly visible. He was sitting in a small table in the back of the room, in front of a cup of coffee and a plate with a half-eaten chunk of roasted dog meat. "You open for business or will I have to wait until you finish your breakfeast?"

"Ah, hey there, Smilin' Jenny. No, no, do come in, gal, just gimme a minute." The old man replied, getting up quick and walking to the back of the store to open the shades. "So, what brings ya here?"

"Steiner passed away." She took her two weapons off her back and hanged them in the hanger by the left of the front door. "Just thought I should drop by to mention that, since you two were so close."

The old man laughed, showing his smile full of yellow and missing teeth, accompained by a two or three silver ones. The shades were now opened, and the whole office was filled with the morning sun. He walked acrross the room once again, sitting on the receptionist's desk in front of her. From the stairs by the right of the room came Carol, his daughter-in-law and the one in charge of the office's security. She was still in her pajamas, her long black hair messy, but she held a revolver in her right hand. Probably had it glued to her hand, as Jenny used to think. They both saw each other, but neither of them said anything.

"Take a seat." said Avery politely. Jenny hanged her black duster as well, having now only her grey tracksuit. She pullet the thick sleeves up to her elbows, so her sweaty forearms could get some contact with the fresh morning air. Jenny was usually unconfortable in showing them; they were covered in more tribal tatoos and scars, two things that would call some undesired attention amongst relatively civilized people. But she knew Avery was aware of her lifestyle, and she got some kicks for making Carol jealous of her battle-damaged skin.

"So" continued the old man, grabbing his reading glasses and reading something from a sheet of paper he grabbed from a drawer in his desk. "did he go peacefully?"

"I guess. He was lying down when I shot the back of his head."

"Hmm" said Avery, smiling with his mouth closed. "Got the proof?"

"Yep. Let me just get it." said Jenny, getting up to get the cigarette case from one of her duster's inner pockets. "Ah, hey there, Carol. Didn't see you there."

"Hello, Smiling Jenny." she answered in a bitter tone. "I'll talk to you later, I better go wake up Tommy."

"Tell your husband I sent my regards." she replied, opening the little case and getting the severed finger.

"Will do. Later." said Carol, goin back up.

Jenny sit down, and laid the finger on the table. Avery wasn't paying attention, he was looking at Carol over his shoulder as she went back up.

"Ahh, poor gal, young Carol. Married to Fort Travis'ses number one slack-jawed bottle-hitter." He turned back at her and grabbed the finger with the left hand, while searching for something inside one of the drawers.

"Eh, Slim, I think you've been going too soft on your boy. Tommy drinks whiskey as if it was free purified water." Avery was now analazing the finger tip's closely with a magnifying glass. "He must drink twice as much as me."

"Imma get him back to his job." He said, looking at the fingerprint marked on the sheet of paper he had in his table. "Nothing gets a fella straight back to his tracks than the good ol' act of workin' to pay for his family's goddamn bread an' butter."

"Amen to that. Talking about work, can I have my payment now?"

"Sure, sure, this is Steiner's finger, alright. Lemme get your paycheck, back'ere."

Avery raised from the desk, and walked to the back room were the safe was located. Jenny crossed her arms, looking around the room dumbly. She remembered last night's meeting with Lee, and how she was supposed to find out what was Steiner's business with the strange men Kowalski met.

"Hey, Slim." she shouted. He could hear her properly from the back.

"Yeah?"

"Was Steiner working for someone? I mean, some sort of group, or maybe some syndicate?"

"Well..." he replied, stoping to think for a couple of seconds. "His record says he use'ta sell stolen pre-war guns to a buncha' major merchants in Headstone. My guess is that he had sum sorta' deal with them folks, but I dunno if that's what ya mean."

"Headstone, eh?" she said, seeing him come from the back carrying bag full of coins and getting up to get her coat and weapons. "That's interesting. Look, I should be going now, they're expecting me at home and all..."

"Just don't forget your money, gal." he said, throwing the bag at her and letting her grab it. "So there it is. Thanks for the service, Smilin' Jenny. I still have a couple've hunterless bounties, case you're interested."

"Thanks for the help, Slim. And the proposition too." she said, dressing her coat and placing the bag inside one of it's pockets. "But I think I need a break for now. I guess I'll spend some of this money in Jonesy's, me and Holster deserve some liquor every once in a while."

"Hah, yeah, go for it, then. Tell Ghoul-boy 'ah said hello."

"Heh, alright. Be seeing you, Slim." Jenny hanged the weapons on her back once again, as well as placing the sheet around her shoulders and neck, this time without the goggles. She walked through the door, hitting back the streets of Fort Travis.

* * *

The Groovy Guy Russel was a weapons store in an undisclosed street in the metropolitan area. Jenny assumed the unusual name of the store was the name of the owner, when it was still pre-war Austin. Probably this good man Russel was a gun nut just like she considered herself, and probably wanted to name his store as if it was one of those saloons named after their owners. Jenny found the place a couple of months before, while simply drifting around the abandoned residential area. Her attention was drawn when she realized it was weapons store, but the place was already looted ages ago. All she found was a pack of old Radroaches that she proceeded to step on and an interesting pathway that lead to a sort of basement to the store. That basement was bigger than the store itself, and most likely worked as a storage. It was divided into five rooms, some of them filled with empty crates and another one with old dysfunctional boilers. A couple of days of cleaning and she was already sleeping in there.

Jenny arrived at the place about an hour after she left Avery's office. She grabbed from one of the coat's outer pockets a key ring containing two rusty keys. The first one to unlock the heavy padlock holding the front door. She entered the dark empty shop, the windows closed, with all the light coming from the breaches of the walls. While taking off the rag of her face, she held the other key and opened the door to the back. The back room had that little and straight stairway that leaded to her actual home.

"Holster?" she shouted while coming down the stairs. "You awake?"

"Kinda." replied that strangely familiar monotone voice. She could see a light coming out from one of the opened doors. There was Holster, Jenny's Ghoul slave, leaned over the workbench.

"You up this early?" she asked, laying her weapons on the old dinner table in the center of the room. "Working?"

"Hah, it's not really what you're thinking, ma'am." said the Ghoul, leaving on the workbench whatever it was he was working on. He turned around on the stool he was on, facing her through the doorway, with the shining silver light behind him turning him in a shade. "I didn't sleep at all."

"You mean you couldn't or you just didn't want to?" asked Jenny, getting the bag of coins and the bullets out of her coat's pockets and leaving them on the table.

"I don't know, maybe a bit of both. I cleaned your pistols and fixed that old Jackhammer of yours." He got up from the stool and turned off the light of the workbench. "Took me the whole damn night."

"Ah, way to go, Holster." she said, hanging her coat and then pulling a chair to sit. "Did you remember to eat?"

"Not really, ma'am." He replied, walking to the table too. He sit in front of her, and she could see him properly now. His skin was light grey, and a bit greenish. It was covered in scars and opened wounds, exposing his dark green flesh in a disgusting way. His eyes were big and constantly sore. They were light blue, almost white when seen against the light. He had a constant skull-like grin, since he had no lips, displaying his big and dirty brown-ish yellow teeth that looked like nasty fingernails. His head was bald, save for a bunch of plucks of light brown hair. Just like Jenny, though, he was short and skinny, but was exceptionally strong. But while she was strong enough to fight, all he could do was carrying weight. Jenny called him that exactly because of his ability to carry many weapons at the same time, and thus working as her live and walking holster when the two of them were in a gunfight. Other than that, he was her personal mechanic, doing all the fixing and cleaning of her collection of weapons.

"I see. So, aren't you gonna ask how was my work today?"

"Ah, yes. Heh, I forgot about it." he said, lighting a cigarette while holding it with his front teeth since he had no lips. "So I'm guessing you did a work on them, eh?"

"Yeah, Steiner was one hell of a pushover. He and his guys." she said, while getting up to get a bottle of beer from the room's old refrigerator. "They had the numbers, and a pretty steady set of pieces. I mean, we're talking about mounted 'sixties, sniper rifles and stuff, right? And there were like ten of them. Guys, I mean. Ten of them, all armed. Thing is, they were one sad pack of amateurs."

"Didn't break a sweat, if I know you." said Holster, bumming his cigarette.

"Not even a drop." she replied, drinking a bit of the bee and sitting down once again. "You see, there were these guys who were in charge of the machine gun, right? So, instead of leaving..."

"Uh... Jenny?" asked Holster, confused when he noticed he interrupted herself. She looked down the table and saw the bag with the coins.

"You know what, Holster?" she said, grabbing the bag and getting up. "I'm not feeling sleepy. Let's waste this money right now."

"Well, sure. How about some liquor in Jonesy's?"

"My thoughts exactly, old chap." she said, dressing her coat. "Come on, I tell you the rest of the story in the way."

The two of them left home and headed to Jonesy's saloon in the merchant area of Fort Travis. They talked and laughed all the way through the city, the morning sun shining over their heads. People couldn't understand why Jenny treated her own slave, and a Ghoulish one at that, as some sort of friend and business partner. Thing is, that was exactly how she saw him. She bought Holster for two thousand bucks from the company of slavers in the Den, back in California. She could see he was smart, skilled and useful in the battlefield for knowing to use a gun, loosely fix it in less than a minute, and being strong enough to carry all she couldn't. She took a liking on his tasteless sense of humor and how satisfying he'd find to serve a woman, even though both of them knew he wouldn't get any closer to her than she would find physically pleasing for him to be. In other words, Jenny liked him as a loyal sidekick. She knew men who treated their slaves, especially the Ghoulish ones, like rabid dogs. Not that such things bothered her, but she couldn't see a reason to treat him like that. A slave so functional, sound and, most importantly, that cared about his master, was something absolutely impossible to find in the entire Wasteland. That little gun-addicted hideous 120-year-old was worth his weight in gold.

* * *

The laughs were now replaced by a somber silence. But only between the two of them; the Jonesy's Saloon was filled with people, most of them the usual suspects. Jenny used to go there pretty much every day she was in town, usually one time in the late morning and another around midnight. The place was run by Jonesy, an old and seemingly constantly annoyed Scotsman, and his young black bartender Leon. The two of them weren't usually happy when she would bring Holster along, since Ghouls tend to scare or gross away potential costumers, but mainly because he would insist in smoking his old and stinky hand-made cigars. Now they didn't care if someone bummed a cigarette inside the joint, after all the men who usually happened to be there were also old smokers. But when a permanently rotting man would start smoking rolls of tasteless tobacco, the patrons would inevitably start smoking, complaining, or simply leaving.

That morning the place was pretty busy; Some people having coffee, some others alcohol, and a couple of guys who would go up and down the stairs to check their rented rooms. The air was filled with the smell of the strong black coffee and the jolly sound of the musicians. Old Bart was one of the main attractions of Fort Travis, since he was easily the best guitar player around. Rufus was the slightly younger and considerably fancier piano player, and the two of them could be seen playing in Jonesy's joint pretty much every day of the week. Bart seemed a bit tired, but very relaxed by the happy and slow sound of his own blues, while Rufus seemed agitated. Jenny liked that song they were playing, even though she wasn't really sure if she knew it or if she even heard it before. Her attention, though, was on the conversation she was having with Holster while sitting in the bar.

"The old man is getting slow in his old age." said Holster, taking another shot of that expensive liquor. "Steiner was a fucking joke. Wasn't him?"

"Yeah, well, that's how I see it. I mean, I killed him and his guys like a ring in a goddamn bell. I can tell they were small timers, but it's just that... I don't know, that's not like Lee."

"As in...?"

"You know, that whole deal. Of being beaten up, captured, held hostage... I mean, the guy taught me how to fight, how to shoot how to do all this stuff I never fail at doing and... And the guy was from the Brotherhood of Steel, for Christ's sake. He received the most hardcore training available in the Wasteland, and I know he's like 70 today, but he didn't seem in bad shape for me. At least not that I could tell."

"Maybe ol' Lee is hitting the bottle."

Jenny stopped for a second. She looked at Holster, who turned his face when he realized she was offended by that guess.

"I beg your fucking pardon, Mr. Holster?"

"Look, sorry, ma'am, it's just that≈" he started saying, but she grabbed his head by one of his little plucks of hair. She clenched her fist as tight as she could, feeling his old dead scalp ungluing itself from the skull like wallpaper on an humid wall. He growled in pain with his squeaky voice, trying hard not to fight back.

"You weren't supposed to answer, you maggot-infested walking used condom. You don't start talking about Lee as if you knew him. Because unlike me, you didn't. And I say Paladin Lee Roosevelt is a fine man and the biggest badass that ever walked this land."

"Jenny, for fuck's sake...!" the Ghoul was now screaming. Everyone in the bar was listening, but ignoring. Even Bart saw it while Rufus was distracted by his own music, but that didn't bother him enough to stop playing. She was now distractedly looking at the fingernails of her left hand while pulling his hair.

"I just want you to now, Holster, that you are a very valuable associate of mine. But most importantly, you're a good friend. Now, if you want to ruin our beautiful Slave-slash-Master, Ghoul-slash-Human relationship, go ahead. Keep saying bullshit about Lee."

She let him go. He started scratching his head, ripping off minimal shreds of dead skin off his scalp. Jenny noticed her hand was now filled with hair, as if she ran her finger through a furry cat. Seeing Holster feeling like an useless weak moron wasn't satisfying at all. And she knew he wasn't trying to offend Lee, especially when they didn't even know each other. But Smiling Jenny couldn't deny; she knew Holster wouldn't fight back, and she did like roughing up people around her.

"Don't take it personally, partner." she said, tapping his back.

"You did." he mumbled in response. She laughed and filled both their shot glasses with the liquor from the bottle Leon left on the table. The music kept on, and everybody kept acting like they didn't exist.

"Try to understand, Holster. Lee was the father I never had, the kind that gives a shit. I would be lying if I said I could be where I am today without all he did for me."

"Yeah, so when some random asshole starts raising just a goddamn hypothesis that he'd been drinking when the raiders showed up, you have to pull off his feathers." He looked pretty annoyed. She couldn't blame him, since she just made a fool out of him and knew he would always keep blaming himself for not being able to fight back.

"That's pretty much it, partner." she said, laughing in scorn just to piss him off a little bit more. "After all, you are my slave."

"Yes, Mrs. Jennifer, and the happiest slave in the Wasteland at that." he rebutted, looking just as annoyed. He pull off his pocket one of his cigars and held it with his teeth.

"Nice song this one, eh?" she said, changing the subject and referring to that song the two bluesmen were still playing.

"Yeah, pretty cool." he agreed, a little less angry. "Y'know, I wish Bart and Rufus could earn some money with their talent. Shame people don't pay for music anymore."

"Heh, yeah. Do you know the title of this one? I'm just curious."

They stayed silent for a couple of seconds, so Holster could try to recognize the lyrics. He lighted up his cigar, the stink of the cheap and dirty tobacco assaulting everyone's lungs. Holster listened for a bit, and noticed they repeated "Nobody knows you" twice.

"It's probably 'Nobody Knows You', or something like that."

"Remind me to ask Rufus when he's done. Jesus, are you really gonna light up that thing?" she said, referring to the cigar.

"Already did." said Holster, getting up from the stool. "Excuse me for a sec, ma'am. I better go smoke outside before the fat Scotsman or his pet nigger see me."

Jenny chuckled in response. He left the bar, leaving her sitting there finishing that bottle of liquor. She was distracted by the sound of Rufus jamming with the piano while Bart took a break for a cup of coffee. The clock hanging on the wall behind the bar marked half past 1 PM. The two o them really lose the track of time talking and drinking and having painful discussions. Jenny caught herself thinking is she would end up ripping off Holster's entire scalp if she kept pulling his hair in a regular basis. It'd be pretty harder to look at him with the back of his dead skull exposed, she'd have to convince him to wear a skullcap. She laughed when she realized the unfunny pun.

Her line of thought was cut by a strange voice to her left.

"Howdy."

She turned her head almost automatically. The man sitting on the stool appeared almost literally just like a ghost. Even though she was distracted, she would have noticed someone entering the bar and sitting by her side. Especially such a strange looking figure; The man was all dressed in black, with a long-sleeved button shirt, along with a pair of black silk trousers and slim combat boots. His grayish black hair was short and curly, and he had a wide black cowboy hat covering his head and a pair of strange round dark shades over his small eyes. His face was long, wrinkled, and perfectly shaved, revealing his grayish white skin. He bummed a black cigarette in a short silver holder, while leaned over the bar's table with his elbows.

"Jesus, man," said Jenny, still a bit jumpy. "you scared the shit out of me."

He smiled, not looking at her. The tip of his cigarette glowed for a second, and two geysers of dark grey smoke steamed out of his nostrils.

"You'll have to forgive me, Smiling Jenny. I've never been one for first impressions." he said, revealing ugly yellow teeth inside his small mouth as he spoke. His voice was the strangest sound she ever heard: It was rougher than Lee's, and a lot rougher at that. It was deep, slow and monotone. Like the voice of an old bluesman by the end of his life. But there was something particular spooky about his.

"I can see that, chief. No offense, but you're not really the kind of guy a middle-aged single mother would hire as a babysitter."

"Heh. You're a funny young broad, Smiling Jenny. It's rare to see a woman with a sense of humor. Especially when she's in the cutthroat business."

"Yeah, thanks, I guess. You aren't any forgettable face, either."

"That's flattering to hear, coming from you. You being a woman that's seen so much. And that's heard so, so much."

She was starting to get suspicious. That man didn't enter Jonesy's saloon for a quiet place to smoke and hear blues.

"How do you know so much about me?" she asked, trying to look confrontational. "You some sort of stalker?"

"Why, now there's a reaction I wasn't expecting." he answered, looking intentionally falsely confused. "Don't you know your own reputation, Smiling Jenny?"

"Look, old man, I really don't have the time to be harassed by some creepy old coot. I've had enough rows with people twice or even four times as old as me in the last few hours."

"It's a tough life for every single living thing walking this devastated world, Smiling Jenny. But you know how the saying goes; Sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes... well," The stranger started slowly turning towards her. She could see that his black shades were in fact welding glasses. And he carried a shining silver star over his heart. "the bar eats you."

She was too confused to care anymore. Without saying a word she got up from the stool and headed to the door. That was when he said:

"So Lee told you about Hemingway."

She stopped.

"Excuse me?"

"Your 'old man', so to say." he continued, laughing a low and deep creepy laughter. "I know what he told you last night. I know what he knows, and above all, that you know it as well."

"Where do you know Lee from?" she asked, as she sit back on the stool. "How do you know we've been talking last night?"

"I don't know Lee. He looks like a nice fella, though. At least from what I hear. I know a couple of people who do know him. As for knowing you've been talking, well... Maybe those very folks told me. Since they had been talking to Lee as well."

Jenny grabbed him by both sides of his shirt's lapel, both hands holding him as hard as she could. He didn't move, didn't even seemed scared. In fact, he had a dumb grin on his face in a sign if scorn.

"Who are you?" she whispered in his face, without bothering to come up with something menacing and witty.

He slowly moved his right arm across his chest, pointing to the silver medal on the left side of his shirt. She looked at it closely, and it read "THE SHERIFF". It didn't say from which town, or anything else at all. It only read "THE SHERIFF".

"Oh" she said. "I see. So you're Mr. Sheriff. Is The your first name?"

"Very funny, Smiling Jenny." whispered back the Sheriff. "But I'm the one dealing the cards in here. If you want to know about Hemingway, you better do as I say."

"Look, I don't know what your little friends have been telling you, but Lee never told me about no Hemingway. So guess what, I don't care. I don't care for this Hemingway fella or whatever the hell he has to do with you and me."

"Now, exactly how sure are you of what you just said?" asked the Sheriff, enlarging his big ugly smile.

"Your point." she replied, shaking him a bit.

"You say you don't know of no Hemingway. But I'm afraid you're mistaken, gal. You know of Mr. Hemingway as much as I and a lot of other equally important men do." She was now dropping is shirt slowly, and he was holding her wrists and gently pushing her arms away. "You just didn't have the pleasure to meet him personally."

Her hands were now away from him. He shook a bit of the dirt of her hands off his shirt. She looked at him as detached the cigarette butt out of the holder, throwing it over his shoulder and placing the holder inside his shirt's pocket. He turned back at her, his left elbow resting on the bar's table, and the right hand on his right knee. Smiling with his mouth closed. The mellow blues in the background.

"Seriously now" she said, now a bit calmer. "Enough of this Hemingway guy. All I≈"

"You'll want to know more about him. Eventually." interrupted the Sheriff, smiling. "And you'll ask me."

"All I want to know is if Lee is fine." continued her, ignoring his statement. She now seemed a bit frustrated and confused, sure that he could see her confusion as clearly as he could see her face.

"Well, in that case" he said, getting up from the stool. "I suggest you visit him in the Metroplex. But don't worry, I can assure his safety for you. My brother and I are lawmen in the Forth Worth block of the city."

"So there's where you're the sheriff from?"

"Heh, I guess you could say so."

"And what are you doing here in Fort Travis? Out on vacation?"

"You could say so as well. Anyway, here's the deal: Meet me in my office down in Fort Worth in about fifty hours. There I'll answer whatever questions you might have."

"Can't we talk right here?" she asked, getting up as well. "Right now?"

"Nah, I don't think so." he said as he opened the door. "There are some friends of mine I think you should meet. Besides, it'd be a nice excuse to visit your 'old man' Lee, eh?"

Jenny didn't say anything. He knew she wouldn't. She sit back down on the stool, still dazed from all the doubts the Sheriff raised inside her mind. Her face was blank, a mix between mildly sad and mildly angry. He was still there, standing at the doorway with that bizarre smile on his face. She was right; he indeed could see her confusion. He liked it. Liked how it had turned out. The way he left her, she'd waste less time and get to the Metroplex as soon as she could. The Sheriff's hunting season was officially on.

"Be seeing ya, Smiling Jenny." said the Sheriff, giving her a tip of his hat and heading out.

Jenny looked around. Leon was in the kitchen, doing whatever it was. The other patrons were all gone, and funnily enough she didn't see any of them going out during her conversation with the strange man. After that she was suspecting her sights were fooling her, her wits getting slower.

But right at that moment, she didn't care about herself. She was worried about Lee. But worried in a way she didn't know until then. Like a mother who doesn't receive letters from the son after he goes to war. Or like a daughter who hears her dad is sick but can't manage to talk to him or anyone close to her old man. She knew Lee was in danger, that someone beat the information out of him. Otherwise, how would that horrible man know that? That they talked last night things she wasn't supposed to know? Although, she wasn't sure if he really knew what he was talking about. After all, who was Hemingway? She didn't remember that name. Her first guess was that it was Kowalski's friend, the one that was captured. But what was his importance in this story, anyway? Doubts kept springing on her mind every second that she spent trying to figure out the Sheriff's words.

The only way to find out if Lee was fine was to go the Metroplex and look for the Sheriff. If Lee was indeed in a tight spot, if he was indeed captured again or even killed, that man was the only one she knew that had a clue.

"Guess it's safe to come in now." said Holster, sitting by her side. She didn't see him coming, but she didn't care anymore. "So, who was the freakshow back there?"

No reply from her. She was still thinking about Lee.

"I see." said the Ghoul, filling another glass with liquor. "You don't wanna talk about it. No prob, ma'am, I'm not 'ere to ask you embarrassing questions or whatever."

Still no reply. He was getting a bit worried, it wasn't really like her to do the quiet type.

"Hey Rufus!" shouted Holster, when he saw the pianist stopped playing.

"Hey, Holster, what's up?" replied the suited black man, taking off his and his shades to wipe the sweat off his face and his bald head with a small towel.

"What was the name of that song you'ere playing a couple of minutes ago? That one that had somethin' 'bout champagne and wine, and repeated somethin' like 'no one knows you'."

"I think you mean 'nobody knows you'." said Rufus.

"Ah, yeah, that's it. Jenny here was curious about the title." Holster said, pointing to the catatonic-like Jenny with his thumb. Rufus also found a bit weird to see her like that.

"It's called 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out'." he replied, talking to Holster but pretending to be talking to Jenny. "It's by Nina Simone, but me and Bart prefer Eric Clapton's version."

"Ah, thanks, Rufus." said Holster. "Hmph. 'When You're Down and Out'..." he said to Jenny, like someone talking to a plant or a deaf person in coma. "Big fucking difference. I'll still call it 'Nobody Knows You'."


	3. Chapter 3: The Devil Deals the Cards

Chapter 3: The Devil Deals the Cards

The night of that day was pretty displeasing. Inside her small bedroom in the basement of the Groovy Guy Russel, all she could do was look at the stained wood ceiling and slightly change her position on the dirty old cushion she had for a bed. Jenny was sweating, but not only because of the heat that the old ceiling fan Holster installed failed to cool down. She kicked the sheets away, washed the sweat off her face and neck with dirty water, took off all her clothes except for her underwear but it wasn't enough. She couldn't stop sweating.

Slowly, she sits on the bed, laying her back on the wall behind the slim pillow, her wrists resting on the knees. It was dark as a dungeon, and all she could see was her white skin all scribbled by the brownish scars and the tattoos. What was happening to her, anyway? So a weird old man comes out of the blue and indirectly tells her Lee is in danger. Was that the reason of why she was so disturbed? Why should she even care about what that freak told her? After all, couldn't he be lying?

Or could he?

Could he?

But that was when she realized. That's it. That was the source of all her disturbance. Doubts. All the Sheriff did was walk into that bar and tell her about Lee. That was what spawned all those questions, and all of them she didn't know the answer. "You know what?", she thought, "Fuck this". It was time to fix the damage the sheriff caused, and in her own style. Jenny didn't see herself as someone beautiful, or healthy, or attractive in any sort of way. Mainly because she didn't care for features like those. But if there was something she always saw herself as, that something was a strong woman. Not because of her strength, or her marksmanship or because she didn't get shocked with any sort of brutality. She saw herself as a woman who didn't belong to any man, who wouldn't hide behind anyone when the bullets started flying, who didn't need to dress like a man or pretend she was one. Smiling Jenny was proud of herself, and because she had that sort of strength that so many women, and also so many men, didn't and would never have.

The Sheriff was playing her like a fiddle. He wanted to fill her head with doubts and make her look for the answers. By making her think he was the one with these answers, she'd go after him and end up deliberately walking into some sort of trap he had in store for her. What it was, she'd only know if she went for it. And that was the last thing she would do, because that man clearly wasn't an average honest lawman. He was clearly on the same team as Steiner; some creep hired by the shadowy figures who owned the guns and the hydrogen bomb Kowalski found in the desert.

That was something else she wasn't sure of: Kowalski. Did he get killed already? If the men disposed of Lee, it was just as likely that Kowalski was dead as well. Meaning she was the next. But this was all mere speculation. There was the undeniable fact, once again, right in front of her. She had to go to the Metroplex and find Lee.

Jenny got up fast. She turned on the lights, the lamp on the ceiling filling her small bedroom in a bluish white light. Her desk was filled with bullets and some pieces of her collection of handguns. The chair's back was covered by her tracksuit. She grabbed it and dressed it quickly, so she wouldn't fill Holster's little deformed head with pointless dirty thoughts if he saw her entering his bedroom in her underwear. She cringed for considering this happening.

"Wake up soldier!" she shouted, kicking his bedroom's door open while unfolding her suit's sleeves.

"The fuck..." he mumbled dumbly, sitting on his cushion as fast as he could. His bedroom smelled like an abandoned abattoir. Other than his old cushion it all consisted in piles of ragged dirty clothes and useless parts of guns and mechanic devices. The desk was a heap of all sorts of rubbish.

"Pack your bags, Holster." Said Jenny with a slick smile, zipping up her suit's front zipper. "Tonight we head for the Metroplex."

"Jenny? Ma'am, what the fuck is going on?" He was now rubbing his dirty fingers against his tired sore blue eyes. "The Metroplex?"

"Attaboy. Lee needs our help, and we can't afford to let him down."

"Are ya going after that weird sheriff? That Hemingway guy you met this morning?" said him, getting mixed up with the names.

"No, his name wasn't Hemingway. He was just... 'The Sheriff'..." she explained, mimicking with her fingers the quotes that wrapped his name while making an intentionally stupid creepy voice. "And no, no chance in hell I'll do as that asshole says."

"Didn't ya tell me he was the only one that could help you? Y'know, to find Lee or to tell you where he was, or whatever?"

"Don't be a fool, Holster. That guy isn't our friend. He's clearly working for the men who're after me, Lee and Kowalski. To find Lee, we're gonna have to look for him ourselves."

"And how are we s'pose to do that?" asked Holster, already on his feet and dressing his shirt. "Do you have any idea of how goddamn huge the Metroplex is?"

"I'll think of something when we get there." Jenny said, walking through the door. "Now c'mon, enough small talk. Get that big backpack of yours and start packing the supplies."

"But no guns?"

"'No guns'... If only you knew how funny that sounds." she said as she laughed. "Don't worry, soldier, I'll select the tools of the trade myself."

Jenny entered her room and started checking some of the handguns over the table. Holster observed her, still a bit dazed, as she compared some of the weapons. She then dropped them and headed for the armory room, were the truly heavy weapons and ammunition were stashed.

"What happened to you anyway, ma'am?" asked Holster, leaning his head over the dark doorway of the armory. "Since we got back from Jonesy's you barely said a word, save for a couple of hours before we got to bed, when you got 'round to tell me what was that whole deal with the Sheriff."

"Yeah, I remember that." her voice echoed from the dark room. "I don't have short memory loss, as I guess you should know."

"Not my point, Jenny. What ah'mean is that you looked worried out of your mind. Now you're all pumped up, looking forward to walk into the Metroplex packing some of the shit we stash in that room."

"Well, Holster..." her voice replied from the dark. "I guess I just found the peace within. Y'know, when you realize you're being a drama queen and then you say 'Fuck this shit' and grabs a gun and starts shooting crooked lawmen."

He stood in silence for a second.

"Jenny, you did not just fucking say that."

"Relax, soldier. It's not like we're gonna shoot cops on sight. Thing is, if the Sheriff is really the town's sheriff and we're planning on playing against him. So we better be ready to fight the law."

"Ma'am, seriously now." he mumbled, a bit embarrassed for sounding like a bit of coward. "Is this really necessary?"

"Necessary? Not at all. But it's fun to play outlaw every once in a while, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure that at least once before your Ghoulified existence you had a happy childhood."

"We really don't need t≈"

"Y'know, you and the other kids pretending you were bandits and lawmen, making 'kapush' and 'bangbang' sounds with your mouths while pointing guns at each other and wearing cowboy hats."

"Do you have an≈"

"Stop interrupting me, you asshole." interrupted Jenny, still a disembodied voice coming from the dark room accompanied by the sound of guns being loaded. "I did that a lot in my time, y'know. Those were the days, Holster. The childhood is the best thing that happens to anyone, and we should all be thankful for having had one."

It was clear that she couldn't be reasoned with. After all, he thought, she spent her youth raiding. It was not like you could convince a woman like that to do whatever the hell it wasn't what she wanted.

"Okay, ma'am." said the Ghoul, resting his left hand on his hip and massaging his brow with his right hand's skinny fingers. "Just promise me we're gonna keep it all civil."

Jenny walked out of the dark room carrying a Magnum on the left hand and a heavy 14mm semi-automatic pistol on the right, with a gun belt laying over her right shoulder holstering two SAAs and lots of .45 bullets. Her left shoulder, for one, was covered by two belts of 7.62 bullets. She had a dusty brown cowboy hat over her head.

"Here." said Jenny, handing over the Magnum. "So, you wanna be Butch Cassidy or Sundance Kid?"

* * *

Fort Travis was now a mere shadow in the purple horizon of the dark blue sky. It was about 6 in the morning, an hour after they finished packing up and headed for the Metroplex. Jenny was packing her collection of revolvers, while Holster carried the rest of the hardware. She didn't really plan on killing any policeman, but it was fun to make Holster uncomfortable by making him think he was about to become the Wasteland's newest most wanted cop-killer.

Jenny dressed her usual Wasteland bandit outfit, without the cowboy hat though. She had the old revolvers' gun belt strapped around her waist. The Magnum was, as usual, holstered over her left ribcage and the heavy 14mm strapped around her right thigh. All those weapons were naturally hidden by her coat, leaving exposed only what she was calling the trip's "main event": her old M60, modified by Holster to the E4 model, the last model produced before the war. It was relatively easy to find a M60, especially in the South Wasteland, but a M60E4 was the kind of thing only the Enclave had in store. Jenny was glad to have under her service the kind of mechanic that could turn BB gun into an anti-aircraft rifle.

The Ghoul walked across the sandy highway with his knees half retracted due to the weight of the backpack, that was heavier even then Jenny's machine gun. It contained mainly gun belts and spare ammunition for the revolvers, besides a couple of cans of canned meat, two bottles of whisky and one of water. Holster carried a scoped Winchester on his hands. He still hoped that he didn't need to use it in any law enforcer.

"So, did you think of something already?" asked Holster, walking a couple of feet behind her. She looked a bit distracted, but definitely not disturbed anymore.

"What you mean, Holster?" she said, with her voice still pretty clear behind the black sheet. "That I don't usually think?"

"C'mon, ma'am. Let's be serious for a while."

"Ain't I always?" she replied. Her pace wasn't affected by the conversation.

"All I wanna know" he continued, ignoring her comment. "is what we're gonna do when we get there. Where we're going to start lookin' for Lee."

"Well..." she said, making a pause of a couple of seconds while still walking. "The first thing we should do is try to look for his workplace. He mentioned he worked for a company of bodyguards, and that they were usually contracted by water merchants from Headstone."

"And d'ya know what company is that?" asked Holster.

"Not really. But we can find out, can't we? As soon as we get there, we can look for the major merchants in the Arlington Block of town."

"And the Sheriff? I mean, how about the police?" asked him again, a bit more nervous.

"Relax, I was just kidding about the cop-killing. We'll just have to avoid them, I guess."

Holster was now more relieved. But he stopped, confused, when he saw Jenny stopped as well. She stood still for a couple of seconds, looking dreamily to the clear horizon by the end of the deserted highway. He was just about to ask what was going on, when she said:

"Then again..."

He looked at the horizon. His sight wasn't as good as Jenny's, but he could see a horizontal row of slim shadows walking towards them across the other end of the highway. Holster slowly grabbed his personal pair of binoculars, and observed the figures with it. They were all wrapped in a light grey combat armors, that looked black from the distance he saw them. They were all fully geared, with helmets and all. Each one held a hunting rifle.

"Goddamn..." whispered Holster, with the binoculars still on his face. "Busted..."

"Don't be such a tool, soldier. He can't touch us."

Holster was about to ask who was she talking about, but that was when he noticed it. It was just like he remembered: All in black, the wide cowboy hat, the pale skin. But it looked somehow different. It looked bigger, wider in some sort of way. Not fatter, but stronger. Apparently, at least.

"The Sheriff... But what happened to him?"

"Nope." she said. Still standing there, steady and lonely. "Not the Sheriff."

"What do you mean?"

"Raise your hands, soldier." said Jenny, raising her hands slowly. "Or they'll start shooting."

"But who are those men?" he asked, still confused but holstering the binoculars and the rifle and raising his hands as well. He was now following her instructions blindly. "'Ah mean, if that's not the Sh≈"

Holster was interrupted when five shots were fired almost at once, hitting various points of the two meters of the old pavement in front of her. He twitched, but she didn't move at all. They could see them almost clearly now, six shooters, besides the creature that was supposedly the Sheriff. The six men pointed the smoking guns towards them, three on each side of the unarmed man in black. He, for one, took the lead:

"Smiling Jenny..." he shouted, walking hard in her direction while being followed by the rest of the sharpshooters. "You're under arrest."

"Play along, Holster." she whispered. Right after, she shouted: "And who says so?"

"The Chief Deputy of Fort Worth Metroplex Division's Police Department." he replied, and the sadistic joy in his words chilled Holster's twisted spine. He and the other men were now just a couple of meters away. The more he came closer, the more Holster could see how big he was. Jenny, strangely enough, acted as if she already knew him from somewhere.

"And that's you?" she asked in scorn, he hands still raised. Holster didn't move, either.

"Righto." he replied, a bit more serious. His voice was similar to the Sheriff's; it was just as scruffy and just as deep, but a lot less rough. Not to mention it was a lot louder, too. The Sheriff sounded like he was almost whispering, but that man seemed to be constantly shouting.

"And what's the accusation, deputy?" she asked, when he was just a couple of feet away. Five of the six policemen were aiming at her, while only one was aiming at Holster.

"I make the questions here, Smiling Jenny." He and his six shooters were just a couple of centimeters away from her, all of them pointing their rifles steadily. Seeing the man in front of Jenny was enough to make Holster realize that she was about half his height.

The Ghoul was starting to get nervous again. Those policemen seemed highly trained, and their equipment wasn't second hand stuff. As the morning sun rose above the horizon behind them, he could see the orange sunlight reflecting on their shiny grey armors. Both Jenny's and the deputy's black clothes were also being illuminated, turning into tones of a copper-like dark brown. Holster could also see the man had shades similar to the Sheriff's. But instead of those small round welding goggles, he had wide aviator glasses with shiny golden frames. In the end, that deputy was the Sheriff's dead ringer, almost a carbon copy of him. The only differences Holster could spot were the shades, the voice and the physical. But the two of them were just identically menacing.

"So" continued Jenny, with her hands still up. "start asking."

The deputy put his hands on his hips, in a manner similar to someone who's tired of waiting. He leaned his head down a bit, his eyes getting closer to her. He seemed angry, impatient. But suddenly, he smiled. A smile that just as everything else in him, was just as ugly and bizarre as the Sheriff's. He slowly took off his shades, revealing two small blue eyes. After folding them, he placed the shades in his black shirt's pocket, right below the silver start that reads "THE DEPUTY". Just as slowly, his hand reached Jenny's face, his thick fingers holding her goggles plastic frame. Roughly, he pulled them out of her face, snapping the rubber connection that held them behind her head. They fell on the ground, and she didn't even blink or move her neck when her torn them off. Now his eyes were only some inches away from her narrowed bright hazel eyes. They starred at each other like two snakes, one expecting the other to make the first move and slip.

"That, Smiling Jenny" whispered the deputy, near her face. His breath smelled like cheap rum and gun powder. "is not my job."

"You see, deputy," she said, nowhere as gently as him. "you are not a very bright fella. I mean, just a second ago you said you were the one that makes the questions here, and now you're telling me that's not your job. Do you have any particular issues wording yourself, or something?"

The deputy's smile vanished.

"By the way, is The your first name?" she asked, looking falsely curious. "I mean, just like your big brother?"

His fist hit her left cheekbone like a freight train. She went deaf, blind and pretty much absolutely senseless for about two seconds. The punch made her turn 180 degrees and fall on her stomach. When she returned to herself, she was trying to get up on her elbows. Her face was all numb, and for a second she feared his punch torn off her the left side of her skull. She passed her gloved hand on the cheek, and it stung when she touched the cheekbone. Looking at her hand, she didn't see no blood. But it was so fast and brutal that she didn't even have to time to think of something to say. She looked over her shoulder, and saw two of the policemen almost shoving the rifles on her face. The Deputy was between them, massaging his right fist with that bizarre grin once again on his face. Two of the other four men were handcuffing Holster, while the other two were looking inside his bag.

"You see, Smiling Jenny" continued the Deputy. "Treating me or my brother like a fools isn't a smart thing to do. No, no at all... Not at all when I'm in charge. When I have six armed man ready to shoot you, and two fists who'll never have enough of hitting smart-mouthed little girls."

She didn't bother to fight back. Jenny could easily get up and disarm the two men, and still be quick enough to shoot that psychotic bastard in the face before she and Holster were crudely shot by the remaining four cops. She really wish she could do that, but she knew it wasn't worth it. While she was still trying to get up, the two cops held her by her arms and raised her. The Deputy torn off the M60 hanging on her back, and held it with a single hand like it was a slim walking stick. He looked at it closely.

"I'm impressed." he said. "A M60E4 model. It's not everyday you see one of these. Now is it, Smiling Jenny?"

"Indeed it ain't." Jenny replied, the two men holding her tight. "Mr. Holster over there helped me to adapt an old traditional model into this one. He's one hell of a talented mechanic."

The Deputy dropped the gun on the ground, making a loud noise of metal hitting concrete. He put his shades back and looked at Holster, who was scared out of his mind while handcuffed and brought to his knees. One of the cops was pointing a .45 to his head while resting the rifle on his own shoulder. The other three men were uninterestedly looking at the random stuff they grabbed out of the bag.

"Are you really that good, Mr. Holster?" asked the deputy, smiling. Holster didn't answer, he was afraid of saying something he shouldn't and end up shot in the head.

"C'mon, soldier." Jenny said, while the two men opened her duster and removed her gun belt containing the SAAs. "Don't be shy."

"Yes..." he whispered. "I... I know a thing or two."

"Ah" said the Deputy. As he watched his men removing Jenny's Magnum and her 14mm. "So, I think it'd be a shame to waste so much talent. Don't you agree, Smiling Jenny?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

The Deputy looked at her, still looking annoyingly happy with all that. She noticed he was politely expecting her to beg for Holster's life, and would most likely end up shooting the poor Ghoul if she didn't. Jenny decided to play his sick game, but in her own way.

"So, I suggest you don't kill him."

The Deputy chuckled. Jenny's guns were now all surrendered, and she was now being handcuffed just like her slave. Holster, for one, knew she had a plan, but was just as sure that it wasn't nowhere less dangerous and painful than playing along.

"Well, that's the idea." said the Deputy. "What I want to do, at least."

"What?" she asked. "Kill him?"

"What? No, I mean the opposite." he replied, a bit confused. He promptly recovered his mocking and strange good mood. "I don't want to kill you, Smiling Jenny. To be honest I do, but that would conflict with my orders."

"Heh, I see." she said. She quickly formed inside her head the sentence 'So you love your big brother more than you love your homicidal tendencies'. Every single word simply came to her mind, and she was just about to say it. But then she remembered her talent to push other people's buttons could be quite dangerous at times, especially when said people were dangerous sadistic crooked police deputies that could punch brick walls into dust.

"But well" he continued, in a clearly fake matter-of-factly way. "that's what I'm supposed to do if you want. I mean, if you really want us to shoot you for running away, or beating you to death for making pointless comments regarding me or my brother..." he said, and she realized that was his last warning. "Then I'd be compelled to do as you wish. To kill you. Do I make myself clear?"

"Uh-huh" said Jenny, now on her knees as well. That man obviously had issues, and his brother was obviously exploiting them. All she wanted to do was take her chances and rid the South Wasteland of that prime example of a psycho that doesn't deserve to live, but she kept remembering he had fists hard enough to convince her to cooperate. "So, what now?"

The Deputy scratched his chin. The sun was now all the away out of the sandy horizon, and the orange gloom that filled the scenery was now substituted by the bright light of the Texan morning, while the sky's deep purple tone was substituted by a cloudless pale bright blue. The armored policemen were now silver figures, in contrast to the all-in-black figure that was their chief deputy. The man leaned down and grabbed the M60, hanging it on his back. He wrapped the gun belt around his hips and shoved the other two handguns in the back of his pants. Making a slight signal with his hand, the cops grabbed Jenny and Holster by their arms and raised them back, still pointing the pistols at them.

"I'm taking the two of you in." said the Deputy, sounding less amused. "The Sheriff wants to talk to you, and he wanted me to be sure you wouldn't run off."

"That hurts, Mr. Deputy." said Jenny. "Your brother has some serious issues trusting people."

"Now, what did I tell you, Smiling Jenny?"

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to mock you" lied Jenny. "So, are you placing us under arrest?"

"Yeah." he replied. "That's exactly what I'm doing."

"You know, we're miles away from the Metroplex. And just a couple away from Fort Travis."

"And what would that suppose to mean, Smiling Jenny?" he said menacingly, walking slowly towards her.

"Means that you're way out of your jurisdiction, boss." she said, just as menacingly.

Holster turned his face away. He was tired of seeing Jenny abuse so much of her luck and the Deputy's patience. Granted he was a clear sick moron, that hardly ever knew what he was talking about. But he was too strong even for Jenny, and they were now under his thumb.

"Well, I have your jurisdiction right here!" shouted the Deputy, punching her right in the nose just as hard as before. She fell on her arms, which were cuffed behind her back. And while he furiously kicked and stomped on her, she laughed uncontrollably for having just heard the worst catchphrase ever.

* * *

"Take the Ghoul boy with you." said the Deputy to the men taking care of Holster, while holding Jenny's arm as tight as he could. "Wonderboy here is coming with me."

Jenny chuckled. After that couple of hours she had to get to know him, she was already positive of how pathetic he was. Nothing but a pet sociopath for the Sheriff, who's physical and age didn't carry the same advantages as the Deputy's. They were now standing under the sun, in an abandoned farmhouse a couple of miles away from Fort Travis. After the Deputy finished beating her up and looting her goods, he dragged Jenny and Holster in gunpoint for a long walk.

They had walked for hours. She lost track of time, but she knew they spent entire hours following that abandoned highway. Hours with her arms being held tight by those two men, with her feet and wrists sore. She could smell Holster's fear, his insecurity regarding the situation. Jenny knew he did trust her. But maybe only her and not her instincts. The Ghoul spent enough time with her to know that chaos and mayhem were her weapons of choice when it came to escapes from situations like that one. And everytime her feared for his life. Again, she couldn't blame him. She was aware of the tight spot they were in.

The Deputy walked a couple of feet ahead of them. The two guards carrying Holster's bag were right next to him. Jenny could see he looked at a small map map he kept folded inside his pocket, which he would check every five minutes or so. She guessed he was supposed to take them to a location besides the highway, instead of the Metroplex itself. That was good because they wouldn't have to walk all the way from a city to another, but at the same time it was a bit suspicious. The Deputy didn't say a word after their little row about his jurisdiction, which still made Jenny chuckle for remembering, even though her left ribcage was still hurting from his kicks and her nose was still bleeding. She could clearly see the two pistols shoved on the back of his pants, and all she wanted to do was to ghet rid of the handcuffs, run towards him, pull out one of them and shot the back of his head in point blank. But then again, that would end up with both her and Holster killed.

After some time walking, they started following a different track. A slim and equally dust-covered, busted road. Jenny took another guess: That was what the Deputy was looking for on his map. That suspicion was confirmed when she realized he didn't check the map again until they reached that abandoned farmhouse. The place only had a barn, a small house, the remains of henhouse. However, she did see four old pre-war military jeeps parked in random points of the barnyard. Guarding them, there were seven other carbon copies of those armored policemen, also armed with rifles. Jenny was then officially worried; The Deputy had a whole squad of armed bastards to escort her to the Sheriff's office.

As the Deputy ordered some of his men to take Holster with them, he pulled Jenny by her arm and pushed her in the back seat of one of the jeeps. She felt uncomfortable, sitting on the dry leather, with her tied arms between her back and the seat. The Deputy didn't seem to care, as expected. He walked to the trunk of the jeep, opened it, and left her machine gun inside. He closed it, and walked back next to her. She could see he still had the gun belt on, with the two SAAs hanging on it. When he turned around, she saw the other two handguns on the back of his trousers. That was good, she thought. She would need those guns later, in case she really had a chance to whack him and escape.

"You sit tight, Smiling Jenny." He said, without looking at her, but instead looking at the men as they threw Holster inside of one of the jeeps and started it up. "It'll be a long trip to the Forth Worth block."

Jenny looked over her shoulder, leaning her head out of the roofless jeep. She saw two of the jeeps pulling out, as the one Holster was in was still starting up. Looking at his ruined face from that distance was enough to make her feel his concern. Apparently he didn't believe she had a plan anymore.

"Here" she heard the Deputy's voice say as her pulled her arm again. She looked at him and saw him leaning over her with a key ring in his left hand. "Allow me to."

Without asking a question, she watched him unlock the right cuff. She massaged her wrist with the left hand, and moved her elbows and shoulders a bit. By then, he walked around the jeep and sit by her left in the backseat. He then grabbed the loose cuff and tied it to his right wrist, leaving him and Jenny tied to one another. When she realized that, she looked at him confused, just to see his ugly smile once again.

"Just to be sure you're not going anywhere. Just to be absolutely sure."

Suddenly, the car started up. Jenny saw two cops in the front seats, and a third one sit by her right. As she saw Holster's jeep vanishing in a cloud of dirt a couple of miles ahead, their jeep started following the other three. She was poked in the heart with the stinging hate when she realized the Sheriff's mysterious plans were going as nicely as they could.

* * *

They cruised for a couple of hours. First following the other jeeps across the desert, then taking an abandoned road, then heading back into the desert and now following a track to the highway. As they followed that bizarrely complicated track, a new question sprung in Jenny's mind: Why were they doing that? Why couldn't they just follow the old highway, like all travelers do when they go from Fort Travis to the Metroplex? It would have saved several hours of travel, and they would have been there by then. Eventually, she also started wondering why she and Holster were first approached by foot, while the vehicles were in a very distant location. Of course, asking them wouldn't be the easiest or most trustful way to find out.

The heat was unbearable. Almost as much as when they went walking along the highway. The Deputy and the policeman of the back seat apparently required a lot of space in a car: The two of them were sitting there as if she didn't exist, leaving her no space to spread her legs or move their arms in the already uncomfortable car. Every once in a while, she looked at the Deputy. She didn't know why; maybe to see if he was sleeping, or if she could pull him out of the car and fall out of it with him, in an attempt to escape and have a chance to kill him. All she got in return were his horrible smiles, filled with that evil satisfaction of knowing he had captured her.

Every once in a while, she'd see a radscorpion or a gecko wandering in the horizon. Apart from the loud noise of the jeep's engine and the sound of the wheels hovering over the sand, the entire trip was quiet. Every once in a while, someone from one of the other cars would contact them via radio, just to ask if they didn't get lost or suffered an accident. Though, in a certain moment, she heard them talking.

"So?" asked the Deputy. "Is it gonna take twice the time it took for us to come or what?"

"I'm sorry, sir?" said the driver.

"Is it gonna take long?" replied him, impatiently.

"I don't know, deputy, we're going as fast as we can. But I'm sure we'll get to the Metroplex soon enough."

"Where are we, exactly?" asked the guard sitting by Jenny's right.

"I don't really know how they call this place. It's in the map, but I can't be bothered to look. All I know is that it isn't really safe to wander around here."

"Why?" asked the cop. "Raiders?"

"Not really." said the driver. "This side of the desert doesn't see too many visitors. That's why we're here in the first place."

That made Jenny think for a moment. Apparently they were hiding from someone.

"Lots of dangerous wild creatures here." continued the driver. "Radscorpions, Yao Guais, golden geckos, Deathclaws, you na--"

"Wait, what?" said the Deputy, surprised. "Did you just say 'Deathclaws'?"

"Why, yes." the driver said, sounding a bit uneasy. "Every once in a while you can see a Deathclaw wandering across the desert. I mean, I'm not sure if we'll stumble across one. Let's hope that's not the case."

"Jesus, that's just what I needed." the Deputy said, half to himself. "Fucking around in Deathclaw country. Bad, bad idea. We shouldn't be getting this route."

"Uhh, well, deputy" said the third cop, the one in the passenger's sit. "I don't think Officer McGee meant this is, uhh, y'know, 'Deathclaw country" or anything. I think he meant, that, you know, there are--"

"Fuck what McGee said." interrupted the Deputy, without looking at neither of them. "I don't care if there are goddamn hordes of them, or just a single one. Deathclaws are a kick in the teeth, no matter how many of them."

They stood in silence for a couple of seconds. Probably waiting for the Deputy to leave the last word on the subject, Jenny thought. Apparently arguing with him was an idea nobody ever considered.

He didn't say anything at all. After that, none of them said anything, save from the driver on the radio. Jenny thought about how Holster was doing. She wondered if he still had faith to survive, and if she could after all do something to save him. She was all but sure; Held down by the Deputy and three armed men, she was helpless. Still, she knew that keeping a low profile was aiding her survival in a certain way. She was having fun studying the Deputy's weaknesses, but there would come the time when she'd have to strike.

* * *

The jeep shook as it crossed the sand in full-speed, crushing the fragile twigs of the dead bushes that covered the landscape. They were now in the middle of a sandstorm, as the sun was setting. The grains of sand scratched her face's skin, and made her eyes sore. She covered her mouth with her right hand, while keeping the eyes only mildly narrowed to protect them and still be able to see. The cops were all covered in armor, so they didn't seem to be bothered. And the Deputy, strangely enough, simply wasn't. Even though his face was perfectly exposed.

She was getting worried. They've been roaming inside that cloud of storming sand for several minutes, and still no sign of it stopping of them getting somewhere safe. It was impossible for her to see anything two feet beyond the jeep's hood, and the driver's sight probably wasn't much better. Needless to say, the other jeep they were following long vanished in the dust and the radio didn't work very well. Still, that entire situation looked like a strange chance for her to escape. She just didn't know how exactly.

"Officer McGee!" shouted the Deputy, his voice barely audible against the noise of the wind. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Looks like a sandstorm, sir!" shouted back the driver.

"I know it's a sandstorm, you moron!" he replied. Jenny wondered if he didn't mind the several grains of sand that entered his mouth every time he opened it to speak. "I just want to know why we've been in it for almost a goddamn hour!"

"This track is very sneaky, sir!" the driver shouted. "It's not hard to get lost in here, especially during a s--"

"Wait, we're fucking lost?" screamed the Deputy, furious. "This has to be a goddamn joke!"

"Sir, I didn't mean we're lost, I was just saying it's--"

"Shut your fucking mouth, McGee!" boomed Deputy. His voice now seemed louder than the noise of wind and the engine's coupled. "I knew I shouldn't've trust an imbecile like you to take care of the driving! You just got as fucking lost, and in Deathclaw country no less!"

"Deputy..." said McGee, sounding now considerably embarrassed but still keeping his voice tone high. "Please, don't worry! I'm sure we aren't lost. Actually, I know exactly where we are, and I can tell we aren't in Deathcla--"

"Look out!" said the officer sitting on the passenger's seat, jumping over McGee's lap and grabbing the wheel. All Jenny could see before the crash was a tall and thin brown shade standing in front of the jeep. They hit the thing so hard it was like driving into a brick wall; the windshield shattered completely, the hood was crushed and they were all hurled forward. Jenny was almost thrown against the shattered windshield, but thankfully got her shoulders stuck between the two front seats.

She raised her head, and saw McGee and the other officer cursing while struggling their ways out of their seats. Their laps and the jeep's floor were all covered in glass shards, which would've probably pierced through their chests if they weren't armored. She felt something pulling her left wrist, and then remembered she was still attached to the Deputy. When she remembered that, she felt his heavy left hand grasping the back of her coat and pulling her out from between the two seats, and then dragging her out of the back seat. The two of them were now standing besides the crashed vehicle, with the three policemen out as well, holding their rifles and pointing them to the strange brown shade in which the car collided.

"Alright!" she heard the Deputy scream next to her. The noise of the wind was still overwhelming, and she covered back her face with her free arm. "Is everyone alright?"

The policemen didn't answer. All they did was keep pointing the guns towards the mysterious figure. Jenny could see it moving, but the sand blown across the wind created a fog-like cloud of orange dust against the dim light of the afternoon. The Deputy pulled out of his pants her Magnum, and pointed it to the sky with his left hand.

"Okay!" shouted him once again. "No go, make sure of what the hell was that thing!"

The three men started taking slow steps on the sand, walking against the howling wind. Jenny could still see the thing twitching. For a moment she was sure it was a Yao Guai, or an overgrown golden gecko. Whatever it was, it was big enough to damage the jeep pretty badly, and still get out alive.

"You stay behind me, Smiling Jenny." said the Deputy, without shouting. "If anything goes wrong, you and I are gonna run away and I'll take you to the Metroplex by foot."

She had the feeling he knew what was about to happen. But most of all, she wondered if he had any idea she now had a chance to try to escape. She uncovered her mouth and said next to him:

"What do you think that thing is?!" she shouted, surprised with how low the sound of her voice was in the midst of that storm. She felt a couple of grains scratching her tongue, and spit them out as the Deputy answered.

"Shit just hit the fan, Smiling Jenny." he said, looking at the men as they took further steps towards the creature. He was still holding the Magnum, ready to shoot whatever he needed to. "The only thing that couldn't have happened just did."

Jenny narrowed her eyes while looking at the three men. They were now almost as hard to see as the creature; just three light grey shades behind a thin and scratched curtain of brown.

"Let's see how lucky we are." continued the Deputy, still looking at the men. "You, especially."

She was then surprised by a loud scream that echoed across the desert, ignoring the noise of the wind. The brown shade grew tall and slim in the distance, like a gigantic octopus seen in the depths of the sea through a veil of dark water. The grey shades of the soldiers danced as she heard more of those insane screams of horror and pain. Gunshots illuminated the sandy fog like fireworks behind clouds, with their loud noises just as loud as the men's screams. The grains of sand raged across the wind, which howled as wildly as it could possibly. Jenny's soldier spirit was then covered in fear. It was almost impossible to see what was going on, but she knew those men were being butchered.

"Son of a bitch!" screamed the Deputy, pointing the Magnum towards that half invisible havoc and repeatedly pulling the trigger vigorously. The .44's recoil didn't even make his wrist twitch. Jenny could see he fired it like it was semi-automatic small pistol.

The gunshots of the magnum were always followed by wild, primal roars. They were loud and scruffy like the ones of a wounded mountain lion, and strangely enough, like the Deputy's screams of rage. Those screams of pain were now gone, just like the grey shades besides the creature. All Jenny could hear now was the chaotic symphony of the wind, the Deputy's fury, the Magnum's shots, and the roars of stinging pain of the wounded, blindly rage Deathclaw that slowly stumbled it's way across the raging sands towards the two of them.

"Here!" she heard him scream, as he handed over the 14mm pistol while resting the Magnum in the right hand. "Take this!"

She looked at it, puzzled. Was he really willing to give her a gun? Even though she was his prisoner, was he really willing to do that? Dumbly, she picked it up with the right hand, the handle fitting her hand like a grim glove. It all came naturally, just like every time; After over a day without holding a gun, she had already remembered all she needed in order to save her life. And most importantly, she now had a plan.

"Goddamnit, woman, shoot!" screamed the Deputy, in the climax of his blind rage, his gun already reloaded and being fired against the closer shade of the Deathclaw. She saw the thing opening its long arms, stretching out its fingers, exposing its feet-long fingernails like a peacock with gruesome feathers. She could see its deep red eyes glowing across the swirling currents of sands, as well as the menacingly pointy horns, as if they were ready to pierce through her shoulders every step it came closer. But most of all, her blood ran cold when she saw that stretched-open mouth, revealing razor-sharp teeth similar to nasty stalagmites and stalactites of a cave no man would ever dare to explore.

Even though she couldn't see well through the sandstorm, it all went on as naturally as it could. Copying the Deputy's moves, she raised the handgun as started pulling the trigger as if she was ringing a bell. A new series of gunshots thundered across the stormy desert. The Deathclaw kept crawling towards the duo after every shot that it took, but there was always another bullet in store for it. In its last ditch effort, with bleeding holes all across its thick hide, it let out a last roar as it jumped with its half crippled legs, both arms raised, in an attempt to impale each one in its claws.

Both Jenny's and the Deputy's last shots blew off the top of the thing's head. The whole part of the cranium between the horns was swept clean off by the two bullets, with the small bleeding chunks of flesh being dragged away by the wind as it fell on the two gunmen's feet, with its arms resting flat by its sides. The two of them stood there, with their hearts beating faster than the spasms of their trigger fingers when they were shooting down the beast. Jenny was sure the Deputy knew it was a Deathclaw since the moment they hit it with the now trashed jeep. She also knew the fate of the other three policemen; it wasn't hard to guess after that point.

"Well..." the Deputy said aloud. They could see the storm was getting relatively tamer. "Now that was a tough guy."

Jenny didn't answer. All she did was slightly turn to her left and point the 14mm pistol towards the Deputy's left eye. He looked at it, in a blank expression of surprise. Like she guessed, he wasn't expecting that.

"Seen tougher." she said half to herself, as he stared at both her and the pistol. She smiled, quickly blinked the left eye and pulled the trigger.

The shot shattered his sunglasses' lenses. The left side of brow and his left cheek were then covered in splattered blood, and his eye socket was now a burning hole. He fell down on his knees first, making her feel the pressure of his falling body on her cuffed wrist. He stood there on his knees for some seconds, looking down catatonically and mumbling something she couldn't hear. All she did was put three bullets in his wide chest, making him fall on his back. Again, she felt his weight pulling her arm.

"Tough luck, big guy." Jenny said to herself. She thought about shooting off the chain of the handcuffs, but then remembered he had the keys. The pocket of his shirt only had a pack of cigarettes and a small flannel he probably used to clean his sunglasses. Jenny grabbed that mildly crushed small pack, from a pre-war brand she naturally never heard of. She always despised cigarettes, considering them small vessels of poison that didn't do much besides ruining one's internal organs across the years. But at that very second, while she was in the middle of a storming desert, stranded in Deathclaw country, with her hand attached to a dead psychotic crook, she didn't care about the future. She didn't care about her lungs failing her when she was in her late forties. Or seeing on her hands the blood she'd cough out, in her fifties. Or even the cancer that would kill her in her sixties. At that moment, Jenny placed the pack of cigarettes inside her coat. All she cared about was in which pocket the Deputy kept his lighter.

And there they were: A small, silver lighter reading "FUCK COMMUNISM" and a small key ring. After looking for a couple of minutes, she found those two items in his back pocket. She placed the lighter in the same pocket as the pack, and tried each key in the lock of her half of the handcuffs. The last one unlocked them successfully, and she massaged her left wrist just like she did with the right one back in that same day.

Free at last. But it wasn't that simple. Just to be sure, she put the last 14mm bullet on the Deputy's heart, and placed the empty gun in the holster of her thigh. She did the same with her Magnum, after picking it up from the Deputy's dead left hand. The gun belt holding the SAAs was also still strapped around his hips. She slowly got on her knees and took the belt off, strapping it around her own hips afterwards. All guns recovered, she thought. Except for one.

The trunk of the jeep was left opened. The rifles were stored in there before the trip, along with her machine gun. Now all that was there were the M60E4 and two gallons of oil. While she checked for any damaged the crash or maybe the travel itself could've caused to the weapon, she heard a peculiar noise coming from the car. It was similar to a voice, but she couldn't tell because of the wind. Approaching the driver's sit, she realized it was the radio. It was left half intact by the crash, and was still working. At least receiving:

"Delta, this Charlie." the gadget said. "Do you read me, over?"

She wasn't sure of what to do. If she talked to any of those men, especially to tell them what happened, they'd come back and take her to the Sheriff. The fact that she disposed of the Deputy would only cause her more problems. But then again, that could be nothing but another opportunity. A chance to get a ride out of there and rescue Holster, all in a single shot.

"Charlie, this Delta." she said to the radio, trying to mimic a masculine voice and sounding rather odd. "I read you loud and clear, over."

"McGee, is that you?" the radio replied. "What happened to your voice, over?"

"My voice is fine." Jenny said, trying to sound considerably less feminine. "It's just the wind, it's causing some unusual noises here in the background."

For a second there was no reply. She feared her cover was blown.

"Delta, do you read me, over?"

"Uhh, yeah, loud and clear."

"You didn't say 'over', over."

"Ah yeah" she said, embarrassed by her lack of ability to keep even the most simple disguise.

"What's your status, over?"

"We suffered an accident." replied her, without any intention to mention what really happened. "We were attacked by a Deathclaw. No one is hurt, fortunately. But the vehicle is damaged, I need you to get back here, over."

"Understood, Delta, but we are already escorting the Ghoul." he said, and she was relieved to see that was the car she was looking for. "Shouldn't you call Alpha or Bravo instead?"

"Uh, negative, Charlie." said Jenny. "You're the one who's nearest. Alpha and Bravo are way ahead of you, we need help as soon as possible."

"Understood, Delta, but what are we supposed to do, over?"

It was getting harder to come up with more excuses.

"Orders from the Deputy, Charlie. He refuses to explain why, but he wants you to come here immediately." she said, adding afterwards: "Over."

"Alright, then we're on our way. Where are you, exactly, over?"

"Just..." said Jenny, trying to think where that place was. "Just come back the way you went. I'll try to light up a fire, it'll be easier for you to see us if it gets dark by then. Over."

"Understood, Delta. We're on our way."

The radio went mute. Again, the only sound was of the wind shaking the grains of sand off the ground. She looked around, and saw the corpse of the Deputy, the Deathclaw, and the three dead officers. Like she guessed a couple of minutes before, the stormy weather was slowly growing tamer as the sun was setting. A full belt of 7.62 bullets and half a pack of cigarettes. The cards were hers to deal.

* * *

The headlights and the stars were all that could be seen. Holster felt like he'd been holding his breath for several hours, watching every single twitch of his cadaverous body, fearing that any of them could enrage the crooked lawmen. He was sitting in the back seat, squeezed between two of the armored officers. Just like the other two in that vehicle, they were menacingly cold figures. But only in appearance; they'd been talking during the whole trip, save from when the driver had to speak in the radio. Apparently they didn't like talking in front of the Deputy, even though what Holster cared to listen didn't seem offensive at all, not to mention it wasn't exactly related to that whole operation or the Deputy's methods of conducting it.

The storm was a pain to handle. Both his hands were tied over his lap, so he couldn't protect his face. He had to keep his eyes and mouth shut all the way, while his sensitive rotten skin was constantly scratched by the thousands of grains of sand. Eventually, he heard the conversation on the radio regarding the accident with the jeep in which Jenny was. While paying attention the dialogue, all he could was pray that his mistress was still alive and well. She was not only the one person who would care about him enough to come to his rescue, but pretty much the only one that could.

"Damnit..." said the driver. They had been driving their way back for almost three hours, and no sign of the Deputy's vehicle or the fire McGee said he'd light up. "Last thing we needed right now was to get goddamned lost as well."

"You mean you don't know where we are?" asked officer sitting in the passenger's seat. The sandstorm was now completely gone, and the only environmental obstacle they had now was the deep dark of the desert's night.

"Well, yeah." replied the driver. "I mean, I kind of have an idea."

"Hah, now that's just rich." said the cop sitting by Holster's right. "Now not only the fellas in Delta are stuck in the middle of the goddamn desert, but we're also goddamn lost in it."

"Calm down, will you?" the driver said, impatient, while trying to focus on the road. "I didn't mean we're lost, alright? I mean I'm not sure if we're going the right way, since we still had no sight of that fire Officer McGee said he'd light up."

"We look lost enough for me." said the fourth officer, the one sitting by the Ghoul's left.

"Why don't you contact McGee again?" suggested one of the men.

"I already told you, there's no response from him."

"Didn't you contact him like an hour ago?"

"Two hours, actually. Since then, he doesn't pick up anymore." said the driver, sounding worried. "He mentioned the deputy was unconscious, this last time."

"What did he say the deputy had?" asked someone else.

"That the Deathclaw cut him pretty badly. He lost some blood, went unconscious some minutes later. That's strange, at first he said everyone was alright. Still, I hope that's the case."

They stayed in silent for some seconds. Holster could see the driver was getting uncomfortable with how complicated that situation was getting. And most of all, with how angry the rest of the men seemed to be getting with his inaptitude. The officer by Holster's right said what had to be said:

"You fucked up, Wendell. You got us lost, and now the deputy's going to die because of you. The sheriff's gonna make you eat your own guts when we all get back."

The one in the passenger's seat let out a loud, sardonic laughter.

"If" he said, putting a distinct stress in that first word. "we all get back. If any of us do, for the matter."

Wendell slammed his right fist on the well, while still holding it with the left. He looked over his shoulder, getting his eyes off the road and alternating his sight between the cop on the front and the two in the back.

"Enough, the bunch've you!" he shouted right after the slam. "Ya know what? Yeah, we're lost. We're fucking lost, in the middle've of the desert, in the middle've the fucking night. With goddamn Deathclaws wandering all around."

"Calm down, Wendell, there's no--"

"Fuck you, Grossman." he said to the cop on his right. "Ya keep pushing on my buttons all the goddamn trip, and now you tell me to calm down? Fuck you. Ah' don't need you morons giving me shit while I'm trying to do my goddamn job and save the goddamn deputy and the rest've his crew. Ah' need to focus on the goddamn road."

"Your accent's starting to show, hoss." mumbled the officer by Holster's left, clearly to himself. Hoslter was starting to get even more nervous.

They spent several minutes in silence, while Wendell kept an eye on the horizon, turning off the headlights from time to time to see if there was any sign of fire. Eventually, Grossman pointed out an orange light coming from a distant point on the west. Without any doubts that it was what they were looking for, Wendell changed the course and headed for the light. As they came closer, they could the see the tall flames dancing in a distance, and the dark smoke blurring the clear sky.

The car stopped. Wendell kept the headlights turned on, the keys in the ignition. The four policemen slowly got out of the jeep, and as Holster wondered if he was supposed to go out as well, Grossman said:

"You stay right where you are, zombie. We'll be back in a short while."

Holster remained silent. He thought about running, but each one of them could hear his steps across the sand and draw their pistols fast enough to shoot dozens of holes across his body. All he could do now was play along and hope for a miracle.

Walking across the dark sand, between the light of the headlights and the lonely fire hey could see a couple of meters away, the officers were all having a bad feeling. The place sounded awfully silent, and they guessed someone would have listened to their jeep arriving by then. One of them nervously shouted:

"Hello?"

No response. He stood there, while the other three advanced slowly.

"Deputy?" he continued. "Officers?"

Still no sign of the men. Besides, of course, the fire. A large campfire clearly lit up by human hands. As they came closer, they could see the mildly illuminated silhouette of the Delta team's jeep. Even closer, they could see across the flames that what was burning were slim and strangely twisted pieces of wood, completely blackened and halfway consumed by the fire.

Wendell walked towards the car, hoping to find the Deputy lying in the back seat. Grossman stood there, staring at the fire as if he was hypnotized. Meanwhile, the other two kept walking around randomly besides the dim light emitted by the fire, expecting to see being seen by the men they were looking for.

"Damn..." they could hear Wendell say. "Deputy!" he shouted over his shoulder as loud as he could. "Officer McGee, are you there? It's me, Officer Wendell!"

"What's the matter?" asked Grossman, while the other two kept looking around.

"The Deputy." Wendell said. "He's not here."

"Jesus..." he whispered under his breath. "One can only wonder w--"

"Hey!" they heard one of the cops scream from the other side of the campfire. "Grossman, take a look at this!" Grossman interrupted himself and went running, being followed by Wendell. When he saw he was being followed by the driver, he said:

"No, no, stay there. I'll be right back."

He agreed to stay. While Grossman ran away, Wendell stood there besides the driver's seat. He quickly remembered of McGee's radio malfunction, and out of curiosity decided to check it. Sitting on the driver's seat, he started looking closely at the car's panel, expecting to see the radio's microphone hanging in there. The weak light wasn't enough to see the car's panel very clearly, but he could see the radio was missing. Even more closely, he could see the severed wires hanging out, as if it was torn out.

Grossman reached the other two men. They were crouched on the sand, a couple of meters away from the fire and the abandoned jeep. He came closer, expecting to see what they were starring at.

"So, what is it?"

One of them only looked at him over his shoulder, pointing towards some half buried pieces of scrap metal. Grossman came closer, crouching between the two men, expecting to see what that was all about. All he saw was a couple of scratched and stained grey metal plates, as well as some strangely shaped pieces of junk. When he was just about to ask what was so unusual about some pieces of scrap metal, he realized the officer by his left held something with both hands; a round piece of metal, in the same state of the half buried plates. Grossman rudely grabbed it out of the man's hands and looked at it, feeling strangely familiarized with that object. He stood up, holding that thing right in front of his face. It looked like a bizarre oversized skull, made of a naturally dirty and rust-covered type of metal. He turned around and took a couple of steps towards the fire, in order to see it next to the light. Truth struck him like lightning; it was a helmet. The same model he was using. The same model all police officers of the Metroplex used.

Grossman promptly dropped the heavy piece of armor on the ground. He ran desperately towards the rest of the pieces of metal, throwing himself on his knees and digging out the pieces with his gloved hands. The other two officers simply looked at him, confused by the whole situation and his attitude.

"Don't you just stare at me, goddamnit!" shouted Grossman, digging out the junk. "Help me dig out this junk!"

They quickly got down on their knees as well, and started digging. In a matter of seconds they started finding other pieces of combat armor sets; chest plates, gloves, boots, calves, shoulders, another helmet... And then another one. With the head still inside.

"Grossman! Hernandez!" they heard someone shout. Grossman saw Wendell running out of the darkness and into the dim light. "Take a look at this!"

"Hold on, Wendell, I'm coming." he said, loud enough so the other could hear. He then turned to the other two and said: "Hernandez, keep digging. You too, Johnson."

The two of them met in middle of the way, right besides the fire.

"The radio." said Wendell. "It's missing. Someone disabled it and, I don't know, torn it out of the jeep's panel. McGee can't have done. I can't see why he'd--"

"McGee is dead." interrupted Grossman. "They are all dead."

"What? Dead?" Wendell said, both shocked and desperate. "Jesus, Grossman, what the hell is going on here?"

"Smart money is on the deputy going fucking crazy."

"The hell, that doesn't make any goddamn sense. You mean the deputy just decided to, I don't know, kill everyone? And how about the fact that McGee called me just--"

"Would you just shut the fuck up, Wendell?" said Grossman, clearly as nervous as him. "I'm not sure of what happened here. All I know is that it was something really, really wrong. Something ripped those men to shreds, and I'm starting to doubt it was a Deathclaw."

They remained silent while Wendell thought of something to say.

"Can you at least show me what you found?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Come on, they are finishing to dig out the stuff."

* * *

Holster's fear kept poisoning his mind. He wasn't sure what was more terrifying; the darkness of the desert, that apart from the headlights and the fire and the weak shine of the stars was a deep sea of black; the fact that his chances of escaping without being seen or shot were simply nonexistent; the unintelligible screams of fear he heard from the policemen; and most of all, the painful doubt about Jenny's state.

The possibilities of what could've happened to her were horrifically endless. He didn't want to start listing what they could be, and most importantly the aftermaths each one would bring. But he simply couldn't stop thinking about it. Like he told himself several times earlier in that day, she was the only hope of salvation he had. Nobody else had a reason to come for him, and that would mean a certain death in the hands of those crooked officers. After all, what use they would even bother to try to find on him? Sure, he could fix a nuclear silo's missile launcher using a mildly twisted paperclip and maybe some bottle caps, but would they even care? That was sadly unlikely, and he knew his death was assured if Jenny was already gone.

Escaping, of course, sounded like the most rewarding thing to consider at the moment. After all, they left the key in the ignition. When he started thinking about a way of getting rid of the handcuffs, he heard the first shots.

* * *

"Hernandez!" Grossman shouted, with the sound of his voice being almost completely muted by the hellish gunshot noises spilled by the machine gun. Hernandez armor was brutally pierced in a dozen different points, with its wholes squirting the then dead policeman's blood. The shots came from a barely visible short shade masked by the blinding light of the machine gun's fire.

As Grossman was drawing his pistol along with Johnson and Wendell cursed in fear and rage, the shooter changed his target. Still holding the trigger, he started aiming for Johnson, whose flesh and joints were completely wasted by the 7.62mm bullets. Just like Hernandez, his armor was pierced like thin wood, leaving his flesh open for the gunshots. Grossman aimed at the light, and could see that the shooter was lying on the ground, about thirty meters away, with his back facing the sky. The machine gun was most likely lying on a tripod, and that's what made it so easy for him to exchange targets so quickly.

The two officers fired two or three shots each, but apparently they had no effect, especially since they were practically all shot while their legs were being caught by the fire. They screamed in pain and fell on the sand; Grossman with his right kneecap blown to pieces and his left leg almost torn off, and Wendell with his two calves and his right humerus completely ruined. As they hit the ground, they dropped their handguns, and the shots ceased.

As the overwhelming pain consumed his last strengths, Grossman realized what just happened. The shooter was hiding in the dark, already lying down and with his machine gun set, and expected the four of them to be in the same place at the same time. The place, of course, was besides the fire. Where he could see them all as clearly as possible. As of what happened before, what happened to the Deputy and what killed the other officers, it was still a mystery for him. And as those thoughts crossed his mind, he could hear loud steps on the sand. He looked up, and saw the shade of the shooter holding what seemed to be a handgun and pointing it somewhere next to Grossman's left.

"Son of a dozen goddamn fuckin' bast--" he heard Wendell's voice say, as he looked at him and saw him trying to reach his gun, only to have his unusual insult cut short and his head crudely blown to pieces. Grossman slowly turned his head back to the shade, which was now a mildly visible coated figure, with its sinister image visible only because of the lonely fire that burned right besides them. The unlucky crooked officer never got to look into the eyes of his killer, but only into the barrel of the 14mm pistol he held.

* * *

The Ghoul tried biting the chain. After he heard the gunshot noises, Holster knew that he needed to flee. They were probably being attacked by heavily armed raiders, or even slavers. As he was sitting in the driver's seat, trying to start up the car, he kept trying to figure out a way to get rid of the handcuffs. It would be impossible for him to manipulate the wheel nicely enough with his hands cuffed. If he wanted to get away from a bunch of raiders with heavy machine guns, he'd need to get rid of those damn things. He kept biting the chain with his nasty yellow teeth.

When the shots ceased, he looked over the fire, curious to see whether the shooters were going away of coming for him. All he saw was a single dark figure besides the fire, slowly walking towards the jeep. Desperately, he kept biting the chains as hard and as fast as he could, even though he knew that was beyond useless. He looked over the fire a second time, and saw the person getting even closer.

Panic kept springing more and more questions. Who was that shadowy figure that was coming for him? Was it the Grim Reaper carrying a machine gun instead of a scythe? Was it his Guardian Angel, carrying a machine gun instead of the typical .44 they say angels carry? Was it some deviant mercenary from the Wasteland, naturally carrying a machine gun? All he realized in that moment of desperation was that those things weren't mutually exclusive, but only in a single case. Was it Smiling Jenny?

He looked again. Nobody now. He wondered for a second where did it go. The old rotten heart skipped a beat when he felt a gloved hand touching his left shoulder. The shadowy figure was now standing right by his left, gently laying its right hand on the Ghoul's shoulder. It was Jenny. A serene, tired smile on her face. Skin and clothes all spilled with blood and oil, her black hair exceptionally messy. The smoking M60E4 hanging on the back of her duster while she bummed a cigarette.

All Holster could do was look into her eyes while holding the chain with his teeth.

* * *

The light of the starts faded away as the sun rose. The color of the sky was identical to that of the first time Jenny saw the Deputy; a deep purple, slightly pink near the horizon. That familiar atmosphere also reminded her of the first image she had a of the Deputy; A tall, menacing figure all dressed in black, walking hard towards her across the ruined highway, while his four men had her and Holster in their sights. While sitting on the hood of the jeep, she looked beyond the extinguished fireplace, the Delta team's vehicle, the half-buried corpses, and saw the Deputy's black hat lying on the sand, about a mile away. Jenny couldn't help but chuckle when she compared that first image to the one she was seeing then.

Holster was sleeping in the back seat of the car, while she was watching the sunrise from the hood. Watching him faint after seeing her made Jenny feel bad in an amusing way; in a rare act of charity for her slave, she dragged him to the back seat, laid him there to sleep and gave him her coat as a blanket. She couldn't deny that it was good to see him safe and sound, even though a bit too shocked by the whole situation. In the end they were both alive, unlike the Deputy, the Deathclaw and half of the squad that was hired to bring them to the Sheriff.

"Last one." Jenny whispered to herself as she checked the cigarette pack looted from the Deputy. Strangely enough, the cigarettes had a different taste from previous experiences. She remembered trying to start smoking before, for reasons she couldn't remember just as well, but the bad taste the cigarettes left in her mouth and the horrible feeling that they left in her throat and lungs were hard to forget. It was like watching yourself die, as she liked to describe when asked how bad she found it. Now, it was different. Smoking them was like breathing, or taking steps. Or maybe simply dying, but too slowly for one to notice. Still, she wasn't sure what was responsible for something random as that change of taste. Something that happened to her that day convinced that for as bad as the smoke was, it was still enjoyable. Whether it was the introduction to the Deputy, or the look in that Deathclaw's red eyes, she would probably never know. But whatever it was, it made her realize she was already dying. Speeding up the process or making it slower was pointless. The cigarettes didn't make a difference. And the smoke was quite stylish.

Her line of thought was suddenly interrupted by a voice moaning. She looked back and saw Holster shaking under the coat as if he was cold, whispering words she couldn't really understand. He must be having a bad dream, Jenny thought. Coming down from the hood of the jeep and walking to the side of the car she could see him facing the back of the driver's seat while still lying down. His sore eyes were shut tight, his constantly exposed teeth forming a bizarre grin. She could still hear him moaning and whispering and looking horribly uncomfortable.

"Time to wake up..." she said to herself, and then started to rudely knock Holster's forehead as if it was a door, while saying aloud: "Hey, soldier? Wake up. C'mon, it's time to wake up."

All he did was moan louder, and she started slapping him relatively gently.

"Wake up, soldier! C'mon, wake up!"

Holster suddenly opened his eyes as wide as he could. Jenny could see the pale blue eyes looking straight inside hers, as if her eyes were a window to hell itself. He got up and out of the car as fast as humanly possible, screaming and shouting in panic. All she did was look at him as calm as she was before, until his screams ceased as he looked around and realized there weren't any armed policemen, or raiders, or slavers, or Deathclaws. Only Jenny.

"Surprised to see me, Holster?" she proceeded to say as she picked up her coat from the back seat.

"Holy shit..." Holster whispered, his voice sounding severely tired by all his screams. "Miss Jenny, is that... Jesus, is that really you?"

"Well I don't know..." she said, shaking off the dust from her coat. "You know anyone else who would go through all the trouble I've been just to be here to save you?"

"Uh, no, 'course not... I mean, I just..." he kept saying, until he put both hands on his head and closed his eyes slowly. "Ah, man... It's just that I've been through so much the past few hours..."

"Funny you should say that. You spent those 'past few hours' sleeping like the corpse you are. Went unconscious as soon as you saw me."

"What'ya mean? That I fainted?"

"Yeah, pretty much." she replied, folding the coat and dumping it inside the trunk of the car along with the rest of her guns and a combat armor set she looted from one of the officers. "I guess you weren't expecting to see me. You probably thought I got killed by that Deathclaw, didn't you?"

She chuckled, while Holster scratched the back of his head with his left hand. He looked around, and saw the former fireplace and the other jeep. Suddenly, he recognized it all as the site from the previous night, and all the rest came to his mind: The lonely fire, the machine gun, and him trying to bite the chains.

"Ah... I remember it all now..." he said. "One hell of night, huh?"

"Glad I won't need to write a summary for you." said Jenny, closing the trunk. "And yeah, maybe the night was rough for you, but the entire day of yesterday was a kick in the teeth for me."

"What happened, exactly?"

Jenny drew the last cigarette off the pack and held its butt with her lips while she crushed the plastic-wrapped paper pack with one hand and picked up the Deputy's lighter with another. Holster looked at her, confused.

"Come on over here." she said, lighting up the cigarette while walking to the extinguished fireplace.

"Since when d'ya smoke?" he asked, following her.

"Started last night."

"Why?"

"Just felt like it, I suppose. Looted the cigs and the lighter from the Deputy, and then I thought 'ah, what the hell'."

"So he's really dead?"

"He wouldn't just hand me these things over, would he?" she said, laughing.

"Yeah, 'course he wouldn't." said Holster, and then he moaned: "I wish I had my tobacco with me now..."

"I don't." she said, stopping right in front of the ashes of the fireplace. "Maybe smelling burning flesh for an entire night isn't as bad as smelling that shit you smoke, but is just about enough."

Holster looked over her shoulder, and saw the ashes as well. He could immediately notice several half-carbonized human bones: calves, ribs, and bits of skulls. But what called his attention the most was that there were particularly huge bones as well, those appearing to be less damaged by the fire.

"Anyway." she said, blowing smoke while gently kicking one of those bigger bones. "Here's the big boy."

"Jesus... So you weren't lying about the Deathclaw, on the radio?"

"Not in the slightest, I wasn't. We got caught by that nasty sandstorm, ended up lost. The driver, McGee, was a dumbass. We crashed on the thing and it torn the three cops to shreds. Thankfully the Deputy was smart enough to hand me a gun and we both shot the Deathclaw dead."

She chuckled while remembering what happened afterwards.

"It's easy to escape a psychotic moron such as him when you have a 14mm pistol."

"Yeah..." said Holster. "So what did ya do next?"

"Eh, after that I realized I needed to free you. So I lured the guys that were babysitting you into getting back in here so I could shoot them and let you out."

"So the fire was a sign, after all."

"Yeah." she said, checking her cigarette to see how much of it was still left. "It was also a way for me to see them. Don't know if you noticed, but I only started shooting when the four of them were near the light."

"Pretty smart of you, ma'am." Holster pointed out. "But I'm still curious about something."

"Well, shot it." she said, looking back at him while blowing the smoke through her nostrils.

"What did you do with the Deputy?"

Jenny looked at him in silence for a second. She then looked at the ground, smiled, put her hands on her hips and looked back at him. Pointing with her chin to somewhere behind him, she said:

"Over there, soldier."

He looked over and saw a black hat lying on the sand, several meters away from them. She started to walk slowly towards it, bumming her cigarette while rolling up the sleeves of her tracksuit like she used to do when wasn't wearing her coat. Holster looked at her dumbly as she walked, until he started to follow her just as slowly.

"And here" she said, brutally kicking the hat. "is the other big boy."

Holster could see that the hat was just there to cover something that came out of the sand; a human head. He looked at it a bit more closely, and saw it was the Deputy. His shot, grey curly hair was now incredibly messy and filled with grains of sand. His face was unhealthily pale, almost greenish. He still had his aviator sunglasses on, but now with the left lens shattered, revealing a dark hole instead of an eyeball. Holster looked at that lifeless face for several seconds, and even leaned down so he could see it even more closely, just to be absolutely sure.

"After we wasted the Deathclaw" Jenny proceeded to say. "I put a bullet in his left eye. Funny thing, he wasn't expecting it. Handed over my 14mm to shoot the Deathclaw and didn't even consider me shooting him afterwards."

"I see..." Holster said, picking up the hat and dropping it over the head. "But why did ya even bother to... Y'know, burry him?"

"Dunno..." she said, shrugging. "Bored, I guess. But aren't you gonna ask why I left his head out?"

"I was actually just about to..."

"Yeah, well, I just wanted to fuck around with him." she said, chuckling, poking his head with her right foot. "Luckily some other wild creature will come by and see this fragile human head popping out of the sand, and then come by to bite off a chunk..."

Holster looked at her, uncomfortable. He thought about making a certain comment, but gave up when she looked deep into his eyes, smiling and said:

"Did you know this is Deathclaw country?"

He kept looking at her for a second, and then turned around, massaging his brow with the eyes closed and walking away slowly. She just looked back, as confused as he was some minutes before.

"Oh, Jesus..." he whispered to himself. "How on Earth did we end down here?"

"Ah, Holster." said Jenny. "Don't be such a drama queen, I just did this to cheer us up a bit."

"Cheer us up?!" he shouted turning around abruptly. "Miss Jenny, this is fuckin' insane! Alla've this... No, I mean, none've this makes any fuckin' sense! How, in fuck's name, did we end down here?!"

"You're losing me here, soldier." Jenny replied, staying as calm as possible.

"Alright, alright." he proceeded, a bit less angry but still rather nervous. "Let me put it this way; Not too many days ago, and 'ah mean like yesterday, we'ere living relatively safe. 'Ah know, you'ere goin' out every day to fight armed bandits, riskin' yore life and such. But that was yore job, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"Wait, I'm not done." he pointed out, and then continued: "So yeah, one day, outta the goddamn blue, you meet that old friend of yours. Lee was his name, right? So anyway, the next day that snake of sheriff crawls outta the Wasteland and tells ya Lee got smoked. And you decide to go to his damn city, just to see if it's true."

"Holster, is that a point to all of this?" asked Jenny, interrupting him. "Because I was paying attention when all that happened, you don't need to keep te--"

"Yeah, Jenny, there is a point to alla've this!" he shouted. "Just 'cause you decided to go outta yore way to take care've Lee, we got dragged to the middle've a goddamn Deathclaw country by a bunch've 'sychotic crooks who almost got us killed over a dozen times!"

"Ah, spare me the rant." she said, turning back and walking to the jeep. "We're not that far from the Metroplex, in the end."

"You mean..." said Holster, outraged. "You mean you still want to go to the Metroplex...?"

"Well, of course." she replied, turning around and shrugging. "After all, isn't that why we 'ended down here' anyway?"

"You're insane." he said, somehow regretting to dare saying that. "You're gonna get us killed. Just like Lee."

Jenny looked down for a moment. She spit the butt of the cigarette, rested her hands inside her pockets, and looked back at Holster. His spine chilled when their eyes met.

"Holster" she said, sounding surprisingly calm. "You do realize I could beat the shit out of you right here, right now, and then make you play along. And you know why?"

Before he could make up an answer, she continued.

"Because you're my slave. Sure, we're friends, partners, associates. All that stuff. But first of all, you're my slave and I'm your master. I paid for you, and not some abusive raider who'd use you for target practice. Besides your repair skills and your wits in the battlefield, I'd say the thing I like about you the most is your knowledge of your place. I rarely have to raise my fist before your ugly face, because a simple 'do it' is always beyond enough."

"I know that, ma'am. It's just--"

"Shut up." interrupted Jenny. "You are a valuable ally, and not one I can afford to walk away on me. No like you had a choice, though, but what I'm saying is that I need you around if I want to save Lee from those crooks. It's true that he couldn't even be alive anymore, but I'd never forgive myself if I didn't at least manage to make sure. Besides, we owe that Sheriff bigtime for what he did to us."

Holster nodded in a matter-of-factly way. He decided not to respond.

"Now come on." she said, now sounding a bit more joyful and heading back the car. "I want to hit Dallas before noon."

He followed her, also feeling a bit better himself. The morning sun was now halfway out of the horizon, and the desert's sand was now all covered in its shiny orange light. That previous day looked, for both of them, a dark age that was long gone. A nightmare from which both had woken up from. Jenny didn't know about Holster, but the whole previous day just got her more excited. Especially now that everything was settled, and the only thing they had to worry about was their way out of there. While she was starting up the jeep, Holster jumped in the passenger's sit and took the nerve to ask:

"Is playin' outlaw as fun as you expected?"

Jenny laughed out loud in surprise when she remembered the night when they left For Travis. She looked back at him, still laughing.

"Hah, I dunno. After all, haven't we only just started?"

The two of them laughed at their own misery while the jeep took off, raising a thin cloud of sand. As they drifted away into the desert, the track of raised dust was followed by the ghastly sight of the Deputy's remaining eye.


End file.
